THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

DAVIS 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH 


TOGETHER    WITH 


THE  FREED  MAN'S  CASE  IN  EQUITY  AND 
THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 


BY 

GEORGE  W.  CABLE 


WITH  PORTRAIT 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
1885 


COPYRIGHT,    1885,    BY 
CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 


GRANT    &    PAIRES 
PHILADELPHIA 


CONTENTS. 


THE  FREEDMAN'S  CASE  IN  EQUITY. 
THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

I.    A  TIME  TO  SPEAK 41 

II.     POINTS  OF  AGREEMENT 45 

III.  THE  STICKING  POINT 51 

IV.  CIVIL  RIGHT  NOT  SOCIAL  CHOICE    ....  57 
V.    CALLING  THE  WITNESSES 63 

VI.    GUNS  THAT  SHOOT  BACKWARD      71 

VII.    THE  RIGHT  TO  RULE 77 

VIII.    SUMMING  UP 82 

IX.    POLITICAL   "SOLIDITY" — WHY   AND   TILL 

WHEN 94 

X.    THE  GEOGRAPHY  OF  AMALGAMATION   ...  100 

XI.    THE  NATURAL-GROWTH  '  POLICY 102 

XII.    "  MOVE  ON  " 107 

THE     CONVICT      LEASE     SYSTEM     IN     THE 
SOUTHERN    STATES. 

I.    A  MODEL  PRISON      113 

II.    THE  THEORY  OF  SELF-SUPPORT 117 

III.  EVIL  PRINCIPLES  OF  THE  LEASE  SYSTEM    .  122 

IV.  IN  TENNESSEE — THE  SYSTEM  AT  ITS  BEST  .  126 


vjj  CONTENTS. 

V.  IN  NORTH  CAROLINA 13% 

VI.  IN  KENTUCKY X44 

VII.  IN  SOUTH  CAROLINA J47 

VIII.  IN  GEORGIA .--•  •  J52 

IX.  THE  PARDONING  POWER *54 

X.  IN  TEXAS XS6 

XI.  IN  ALABAMA l65 

XII.  IN  VIRGINIA l67 

XIII.  IN   ARKANSAS,   MISSISSIPPI   AND  LOUISIANA— 

THE  SYSTEM  AT  ITS  WORST 168 

XIV.  CONCLUSIONS J72 

XV.  EXCUSES   FOR    THE   SYSTEM J73 


THE  FREEDMAN'S  CASE  IN  EQUITY. 


THE  FREEDMAN'S  CASE  IN  EQUITY. 

THE  greatest  social  problem  before  the  Ameri- 
can people  to-day  is,  as  it  has  been  for  a 
hundred  years,  the  presence  among  us  of  the 
negro. 

No  comparable  entanglement  was  ever  drawn 
round  itself  by  any  other  modern  nation  with  so 
serene  a  disregard  of  its  ultimate  issue,  or  with  a 
more  distinct  national  responsibility.  The  Afri- 
can slave  was  brought  here  by  cruel  force,  and 
with  everybody's  consent  except  his  own.  Every- 
where the  practice  was  favored  as  a  measure  of 
common  aggrandizement.  When  a  few  men  and 
women  protested,  they  were  mobbed  in  the  pub- 
lic interest,  with  the  public  consent.  There  rests, 
therefore,  a  moral  responsibility  on  the  whole  na- 
tion never  to  lose  sight  of  the  results  of  African- 
American  slavery  until  they  cease  to  work  mis- 
chief and  injustice. 

It  is  true  these  responsibilities  may  not  fall 
everywhere  with  the  same  weight ;  but  they  are 
nowhere  entirely  removed.  The  original  seed 
of  trouble  was  sown  with  the  full  knowledge  and 
consent  of  the  nation.  The  nation  was  to  blame  ; 


2  THE  FREED  MAN'S  CASE  IN  EQUITY. 

and  so  long  as  evils  spring  from  it,  their  correc- 
tion must  be  the  nation's  duty. 

The  late  Southern  slave  has  within  two  decades 
risen  from  slavery  to  freedom,  from  freedom  to 
citizenship,  passed  on  into  political  ascendency, 
and  fallen  again  from  that  eminence.  The 
amended  Constitution  holds  him  up  in  his  new 
political  rights  as  well  as  a  mere  constitution  can. 
On  the  other  hand,  certain  enactments  of  Con- 
gress, trying  to  reach  further,  have  lately  been 
made  void  by  the  highest  court  of  the  nation. 
And  another  thing  has  happened.  The  popular 
mind  in  the  old  free  States,  weary  of  strife  at 
arm's  length,  bewildered  by  its  complications, 
vexed  by  many  a  blunder,  eager  to  turn  to  the 
cure  of  other  evils,  and  even  tinctured  by  that 
race  feeling  whose  grosser  excesses  it  would  so 
gladly  see  suppressed,  has  retreated  from  its  un- 
comfortable dictational  attitude  and  thrown  the 
whole  matter  over  to  the  States  of  the  South. 
Here  it  rests,  no  longer  a  main  party  issue,  but  a 
group  of  questions  which  are  to  be  settled  by 
each  of  these  States  separately  in  the  light  of 
simple  equity  and  morals,  and  which  the  genius 
of  American  government  does  not  admit  of  being 
forced  upon  them  from  beyond  their  borders. 
Thus  the  whole  question,  become  secondary  in 
party  contest,  has  yet  reached  a  period  of  su- 
preme importance. 

Before  slavery  ever  became  a  grave  question 


THE  FREEDMAWS  CASE  IN  EQUITY.          3 

in  the  nation's  politics, — when  it  seemed  each 
State's  private  affair,  developing  unmolested, — 
it  had  two  different  fates  in  two  different  parts  of 
the  country.  In  one,  treated  as  a  question  of 
public  equity,  it  withered  away.  In  the  other, 
overlooked  in  that  aspect,  it  petrified  and  became 
the  corner-stone  of  the  whole  social  structure; 
and  when  men  sought  its  overthrow  as  a  national 
evil,  it  first  brought  war  upon  the  land,  and  then 
grafted  into  the  citizenship  of  one  of  the  most 
intelligent  nations  in  the  world  six  millions  of 
people  from  one  of  the  most  debased  races  on 
the  globe. 

And  now  this  painful  and  wearisome  question, 
sown  in  the  African  slave-trade,  reaped  in  our 
civil  war,  and  garnered  in  the  national  adoption 
of  millions  of  an  inferior  race,  is  drawing  near  a 
second  seed-time.  For  this  is  what  the  impatient 
proposal  to  make  it  a  dead  and  buried  issue 
really  means.  It  means  to  recommit  it  to  the 
silence  and  concealment  of  the  covered  furrow. 
Beyond  that  incubative  retirement  no  suppressed 
moral  question  can  be  pushed;  but  all  such 
questions,  ignored  in  the  domain  of  private  mor- 
als, spring  up  and  expand  once  more  into  ques- 
tions of  public  equity ;  neglected  as  matters  of 
public  equity,  they  blossom  into  questions  of 
national  interest;  and,  despised  in  that  guise, 
presently  yield  the  red  fruits  of  revolution. 

This  question  must  never  again  bear  that  fruit. 


4          THE  FREEDMAWS  CASE  IN  EQUITY. 

There  must  arise,  nay,  there  has  arisen,  in  the 
South  itself,  a  desire  to  see  established  the  equi- 
ties of  the  issue  ;  to  make  it  no  longer  a  question 
of  endurance  between  one  group  of  States  and 
another,  but  between  the  moral  debris  of  an  ex- 
ploded evil  and  the  duty,  necessity,  and  value  of 
planting  society  firmly  upon  universal  justice 
and  equity.  This,  and  this  only,  can  give  the 
matter  final  burial.  True,  it  is  still  a  question 
between  States ;  but  only  secondarily,  as  some- 
thing formerly  participated  in,  or  as  it  concerns 
every  householder  to  know  that  what  is  being 
built  against  his  house  is  built  by  level  and 
plummet  It  is  the  interest  of  the  Southern 
States  first,  and  consequently  of  the  whole  land, 
to  discover  clearly  these  equities  and  the  errors 
that  are  being  committed  against  them. 

.  If  we  take  up  this  task,  the  difficulties  of  the 
situation  are  plain.  We  have,  first,  a  revision  of 
Southern  State  laws  which  has  forced  into  them 
the  recognition  of  certain  human  rights  discord- 
ant with  the  sentiments  of  those  who  have  always 
called  themselves  the  community;  second,  the 
removal  of  the  entire  political  machinery  by 
which  this  forcing  process  was  effected ;  and, 
third,  these  revisions  left  to  be  interpreted  and 
applied  under  the  domination  of  these  antago- 
nistic sentiments.  These  being  the  three  terms 
of  the  problem,  one  of  three  things  must  result. 
There  will  arise  a  system  of  vicious  evasions 


THE  FREEDMAN'S  CASE  IN  EQUITY.          5 

eventually  ruinous"  to  public  and  private  morals 
and  liberty,  or  there  will  be  a  candid  reconsider- 
ation of  the  sentiments  hostile  to  these  enact- 
ments, or  else  there  will  be  a  division,  some  tak- 
ing one  course  and  some  the  other. 

This  is  what  we  should  look  for  from  our 
knowledge  of  men  and  history ;  and  this  is  what 
we  find.  The  revised  laws,  only  where  they 
could  not  be  evaded,  have  met  that  reluctant  or 
simulated  acceptance  of  their  narrowest  letter 
which  might  have  been  expected — a  virtual  suf- 
focation of  those  principles  of  human  equity 
which  the  unwelcome  decrees  do  little  more  than 
shadow  forth.  But  in  different  regions  this  atti- 
tude has  been  made  in  very  different  degrees  of 
emphasis.  In  some  the  new  principles  have 
grown,  or  are  growing,  into  the  popular  convic- 
tion, and  the  opposing  sentiments  are  correspond- 
ingly dying  out.  There  are  even  some  districts 
where  they  have  received  much  practical  accept- 
ance. While,  again,  other  limited  sections  lean 
almost  wholly  toward  the  old  sentiments ;  an 
easy  choice,  since  it  is  the  conservative,  the  un- 
yielding attitude,  whose  strength  is  in  the  ab- 
sence of  intellectual  and  moral  debate. 

Now,  what  are  the  gains,  what  the  losses  of 
these  diverse  attitudes  ?  Surely  these  are  urgent 
questions  to  any  one  in  our  country  who  be- 
lieves it  is  always  a  losing  business  to  be  in  the 
wrong.  Particularly  in  the  South,  where  each 


6          THE  FREEDMAWS  CASE  IN  EQUITY. 

step  in  this  affair  is  an  unprecedented  experience, 
it  will  be  folly  if  each  region,  small  or  large,  does 
not  study  the  experiences  of  all  the  rest.  And 
yet  this,  alone,  would  be  superficial;  we  would 
still  need  to  do  more.  We  need  to  go  back  to 
the  roots  of  things  and  study  closely,  analytically, 
the  origin,  the  present  foundation,  the  rationality, 
the  Tightness,  of  those  sentiments  surviving  in 
us  which  prompt  an  attitude  qualifying  in  any 
way  peculiarly  the. black  man's  liberty  among  us. 
Such  a  treatment  will  be  less  abundant  in  inci- 
dent, less  picturesque ;  but  it  will  be  more 
thorough. 

First,  then,  what  are  these  sentiments  ?  Fore- 
most among  them  stands  the  idea  that  he  is  of 
necessity  an  alien.  He  was  brought  to  our 
shores  a  naked,  brutish,  unclean,  captive,  pagan 
savage,  to  be  and  remain  a  kind  of  connecting 
link  between  man  and  the  beasts  of  burden.  The 
great  changes  to  result  from  his  contact  with  a 
superb  race  of  masters  were  not  taken  into  ac- 
count. As  a  social  factor  he  was  intended  to  be 
as  purely  zero  as  the  brute  at  the  other  end  of 
his  plow-line.  The  occasional  mingling  of  his 
blood  with  that  of  the  white  man  worked  no 
change  in  the  sentiment ;  one,  two,  four,  eight, 
multiplied  upon  or  divided  into  zero,  still  gave 
zero  for  the  result.  Generations  of  American 
nativity  made  no  difference;  his  children  and 
children's  children  were  born  in  sight  of  our 


THE  FREEDMAWS  CASE  IN  EQUITY.          j 

door,  yet  the  old  notion  held  fast.  He  increased 
to  vast  numbers,  but  it  never  wavered.  He  ac- 
cepted our  dress,  language,  religion,  all  the  fun- 
damentals of  our  civilization,  and  became  forever 
expatriated  from  his  own  land  ;  still  he  remained, 
to  us,  an  alien.  Our  sentiment  went  blind.  It 
did  not  see  that  gradually,  here  by  force  and 
there  by  choice,  he  was  fulfilling  a  host  of  con- 
ditions that  earned  at  least  a  solemn  moral  right 
to  that  naturalization  which  no  one  at  first  had 
dreamed  of  giving  him.  Frequently  he  even 
bought  back  the  freedom  of  which  he  had  been 
robbed,  became  a  tax-payer,  and  at  times  an 
educator  of  his  children  at  his  own  expense ; 
but  the  old  idea  of  alienism  passed  laws  to  banish 
him,  his  wife,  and  children  by  thousands  from 
the  State,  and  threw  him  into  loathsome  jails  as 
a  common  felon  for  returning  to  his  native  land. 

It  will  be  wise  to  remember  that  these  were 
the  acts  of  an  enlightened,  God-fearing  people, 
the  great  mass  of  whom  have  passed  beyond  all 
earthly  accountability.  They  were  our  fathers. 
I  am  the  son  and  grandson  of  slave-holders. 
These  were  their  faults ;  posterity  will  discover 
ours  ;  but  these  things  must  be  frankly,  fearlessly 
taken  into  account  if  we  are  ever  to  understand 
the  true  interests  of  our  peculiar  state  of  society. 

Why,  then,  did  this  notion,  that  the  man  of 
color  must  always  remain  an  alien,  stand  so  un- 
shaken ?  We  may  readily  recall  how,  under  an- 


8          THE  FREEDMAWS  CASE  IN  EQUITY. 

cient  systems,  he  rose  not  only  to  high  privileges, 
but  often  to  public  station  and  power.  Singu- 
larly, with  us  the  trouble  lay  in  a  modern  princi- 
ple of  liberty.  The  whole  idea  of  American 
government  rested  on  all  men's  equal,  inalienable 
right  to  secure  their  life,  liberty,  and  the  pursuit 
of  happiness  by  governments  founded  in  their 
own  consent.  Hence,  our  Southern  forefathers, 
shedding  their  blood,  or  ready  to  shed  it,  for  this 
principle,  yet  proposing  in  equal  good  conscience 
to  continue  holding  the  American  black  man  and 
mulatto  and  quadroon  in  slavery,  had  to  anchor 
that  conscience,  their  conduct,  and  their  laws  in 
the  conviction  that  the  man  of  African  tincture 
was,  not  by  his  master's  arbitrary  assertion 
merely,  but  by  nature  and  unalterably,  an  alien. 
If  that  hold  should  break,  one  single  wave  of 
irresistible  inference  would  lift  our  whole  South- 
ern social  fabric  and  dash  it  upon  the  rocks  of 
negro  emancipation  and  enfranchisement.  How 
was  it  made  secure?  Not  by  books,  though 
they  were  written  among  us  from  every  possible 
point  of  view,  but,  with  the  mass  of  our  slave- 
owners, by  the  calm  hypothesis  of  a  positive,  in- 
tuitive knowledge.  To  them  the  statement  was 
an  axiom.  They  abandoned  the  methods  of 
moral  and  intellectual  reasoning,  and  fell  back 
upon  this  assumption  of  a  God-given  instinct, 
nobler  than  reason,  and  which  it  was  an  insult  to  a 
freeman  to  ask  him  to  prove  on  logical  grounds. 


THE  FREEDMAN'S  CASE  IN  EQUITY.         g 

Yet  it  was  found  not  enough.  The  slave  mul- 
tiplied. Slavery  was  a  dangerous  institution. 
Few  in  the  South  to-day  have  any  just  idea  how 
often  the  slave  plotted  for  his  freedom.  Our 
Southern  ancestors  were  a  noble,  manly  people, 
springing  from  some  of  the  most  highly  intelli- 
gent, aspiring,  upright,  and  refined  nations  of  the 
modern  world ;  from  the  Huguenot,  the  French 
Chevalier,  the  Old  Englander,  the  New  Eng- 
lander.  Their  acts  were  not  always  right ;  whose 
are  ?  But  for  their  peace  of  mind  they  had  to 
believe  them  so.  They  therefore  spoke  much  of 
the  negro's  contentment  with  that  servile  condi- 
tion for  which  nature  had  designed  him.  Yet 
there  was  no  escaping  the  knowledge  that  we 
dared  not  trust  the  slave  caste  with  any  power 
that  could  be  withheld  from  them.  So  the  per- 
petual alien  was  made  also  a  perpetual  menial, 
and  the  belief  became  fixed  that  this,  too,  was 
nature's  decree,  not  ours. 

Thus  we  stood  at  the  close  of  the  civil  war. 
There  were  always  a  few  Southerners  who  did 
not  justify  slavery,  and  many  who  cared  nothing 
whether  it  was  just  or  not.  But  what  we  have 
described  was  the  general  sentiment  of  good 
Southern  people.  There  was  one  modifying 
sentiment.  It  related  to  the  slave's  spiritual 
interests.  Thousands  of  pious  masters  and  mis- 
tresses flatly  broke  the  shameful  laws  that  stood 
between  their  slaves  and  the  Bible.  Slavery  was 

2 


I  o       THE  FREED  MA  W  S  CASE  IN  EQ  UIT  Y 

right ;  but  religion,  they  held,  was  for  the  alien 
and  menial  as  well  as  for  the  citizen  and  master. 
They  could  be  alien  and  citizen,  menial  and 
master,  in  church  as  well  as  out;  and  they 
were. 

Yet  over  against  this  lay  another  root  of  to- 
day's difficulties.  This  perpetuation  of  the  alien, 
menial  relation  tended  to  perpetuate  the  vices 
that  naturally  cling  to  servility,  dense  ignorance 
and  a  hopeless  separation  from  true  liberty  ;  and 
as  we  could  not  find  it  in  our  minds  to  blame 
slavery  with  this  perpetuation,  we  could  only 
assume  as  a  further  axiom  that  there  was,  by 
nature,  a  disqualifying  moral  taint  in  every  drop 
of  negro  blood.  The  testimony  of  an  Irish, 
German,  Italian,  French,  or  Spanish  beggar  in  a 
court  of  justice  was  taken  on  its  merits  ;  but  the 
colored  man's  was  excluded  by  law  wherever  it 
weighed  against  a  white  man.  The  colored  man 
was  a  prejudged  culprit.  The  discipline  of  the 
plantation  required  that  the  difference  between 
master  and  slave  be  never  lost  sight  of  by  either. 
It  made  our  master  caste  a  solid  mass,  and  fixed 
a  common  masterhood  and  subserviency  between 
the  ruling  and  the  serving  race.1  Every  one  of 

1  The  old  Louisiana  Black  Code  says,  "  That  free  people  of 
color  ought  never  to  ...  presume  to  conceive  themselves 
equal  to  the  white ;  but,  on  the  contrary,  that  they  ought  to 
yield  to  them  in  every  occasion,  and  never  speak  or  answer  to 
them  but  with  respect,  under  the  penalty  of  imprisonment  accord- 
ing to  the  nature  of  the  offense."  (Section  21,  p.  164.) 


THE  FREEDMAN'S  CASE  IN  EQUITY.       j  j 

us  grew  up  in  the  idea  that  he  had,  by  birth 
and  race,  certain  broad  powers  of  police  over 
any  and  every  person  of  color. 

All  at  once  the  tempest  of  war  snapped  off  at 
the  ground  every  one  of  these  arbitrary  relations, 
without  removing  a  single  one  of  the  sentiments 
in  which  they  stood  rooted.  Then,  to  fortify  the 
freedman  in  the  tenure  of  his  new  rights,  he  was 
given  the  ballot.  Before  this  grim  fact  the 
notion  of  alienism,  had  it  been  standing  alone, 
might  have  given  way.  The  idea  that  slavery 
was  right  did  begin  to  crumble  almost  at  once. 
"  As  for  slavery,"  said  an  old  Creole  sugar-planter 
and  former  slave-owner  to  me,  "  it  was  damna- 
ble." The  revelation  came  like  a  sudden  burst 
of  light.  It  is  one  of  the  South's  noblest  poets 
who  has  but  just  said  : 

"  I  am  a  Southerner ; 
I  love  the  South  ;  I  dared  for  her 
To  fight  from  Lookout  to  the  sea, 
With  her  proud  banner  over  me  : 
But  from  my  lips  thanksgiving  broke, 
As  God  in  battle-thunder  spoke, 
And  that  Black  Idol,  breeding  drouth 
And  dearth  of  human  sympathy 
Throughout  the  sweet  and  sensuous  South, 

Was,  with  its  chains  and  human  yoke, 
Blown  hellward  from  the  cannon's  mouth, 

While  Freedom  cheered  behind  the  smoke  !  "  l 

With  like  readiness  might  the  old  alien  rela- 
tion have  given  way  if  we  could  only,  while 

1  Maurice  Thompson,  in  the  "  Independent." 


12        THE  FREED  MAWS  CASE  IN  EQUITY. 

letting  that  pass,  have  held  fast  by  the  other  old 
ideas.  But  they  were  all  bound  together.  See 
our  embarrassment.  For  more  than  a  hundred 
years  we  had  made  these  sentiments  the  absolute 
essentials  to  our  self-respect  And  yet  if  we 
clung  to  them,  how  could  we  meet  the  freedman 
on  equal  terms  in  the  political  field  ?  Even  to 
lead  would  not  compensate  us;  for  the  funda- 
mental profession  of  American  politics  is  that 
the  leader  is  servant  to  his  followers.  It  was  too 
much.  The  ex-master  and  ex-slave — the  quarter- 
deck and  the  forecastle,  as  it  were — could  not 
come  together.  But  neither  could  the  American 
mind  tolerate  a  continuance  of  martial  law.  The 
agonies  of  reconstruction  followed. 

The  vote,  after  all,  was  a  secondary  point,  and 
the  robbery  and  bribery  on  one  side,  and  whip- 
ping and  killing  on  the  other,  were  but  huge 
accidents  of  the  situation.  The  two  main  ques- 
tions were  really  these :  on  the  freedman's  side, 
how  to  establish  republican  State  government 
under  the  same  recognition  of  his  rights  that  the 
rest  of  Christendom  accorded  him  ;  and  on  the 
former  master's  side,  how  to  get  back  to  the  old 
semblance  of  republican  State  government,  and 
— allowing  that  the  freedman  was  de  facto  a 
voter — still  to  maintain  a  purely  arbitrary  super- 
iority of  all  whites  over  all  blacks,  and  a  purely 
arbitrary  equality  of  all  blacks  among  themselves 
as  an  alien,  menial,  and  dangerous  class. 


THE  FREEDMAN'S  CASE  IN  EQUITY.       13 

Exceptionally  here  and  there  some  one  in  the 
master  caste  did  throw  off  the  old  and  accept  the 
new  ideas,  and,  if  he  would  allow  it,  was  instantly 
claimed  as  a  leader  by  the  newly  liberated  thous- 
ands around  him.  But  just  as  promptly  the  old 
master  race  branded  him  also  an  alien  reprobate, 
and  in  ninety-nine  cases  out  of  a  hundred,  if  he 
had  not  already  done  so,  he  soon  began  to  con- 
firm by  his  actions  the  brand  on  his  cheek. 
However,  we  need  give  no  history  here  of  the 
dreadful  episode  of  reconstruction.  Under  an 
experimentative  truce  its  issues  rest  to-day  upon 
the  pledge  of  the  wiser  leaders  of  the  master 
class  :  Let  us  but  remove  the  hireling  demagogue, 
and  we  will  see  to  it  that  the  freedman  is  accorded 
a  practical,  complete,  and  cordial  recognition  of 
his  equality  with  the  white  man  before  the  law. 
As  far  as  there  has  been  any  understanding  at 
all,  it  is  not  that  the  originally  desired  ends  of 
reconstruction  have  been  abandoned,  but  that  the 
men  of  North  and  South  have  agreed  upon  a 
new,  gentle,  and  peaceable  method  for  reaching 
them ;  that,  without  change  as  to  the  ends  in 
view,  compulsory  reconstruction  has  been  set 
aside  and  a  voluntary  reconstruction  is  on  trial. 

It  is  the  fashion  to  say  we  paused  to  let  the 
"  feelings  engendered  by  the  war  "  pass  away,  and 
that  they  are  passing.  But  let  not  these  truths 
lead  us  into  error.  The  sentiments  we  have 
been  analyzing,  and  upon  which  we  saw  the  old 


I4       THE  FREEDMAWS  CASE  IN  EQUITY. 

compulsory  reconstruction  go  hard  aground — 
these  are  not  the  "feelings  engendered  by  the 
war."  We  must  disentangle  them  from  the  "  feel- 
ings engendered  by  the  war,"  and  by  reconstruc- 
tion. They  are  older  than  either.  But  for  them 
slavery  would  have  perished  of  itself,  and  eman- 
cipation and  reconstruction  been  peaceful  revolu- 
tions. 

Indeed,  as  between  master  and  slave,  the  "  feel- 
ings engendered  by  the  war,"  are  too  trivial,  or 
at  least  were  too  short-lived,  to  demand  our 
present  notice.  One  relation  and  feeling  the  war 
destroyed :  the  patriarchal  tie  and  its  often  really 
tender  and  benevolent  sentiment  of  dependence 
and  protection.  When  the  slave  became  a  freed- 
man,  the  sentiment  of  alienism  became  for  the 
first  time  complete.  The  abandonment  of  this 
relation  was  not  one-sided;  the  slave,  even  before 
the  master,  renounced  it.  Countless  times,  since 
reconstruction  began,  the  master  has  tried,  in 
what  he  believed  to  be  everybody's  interest,  to 
play  on  that  old  sentiment.  But  he  found  it  a 
harp  without  strings.  The  freedman  could  not 
formulate,  but  he  could  see,  all  our  old  ideas  of 
autocracy  and  subserviency,  of  master  and  menial, 
of  an  arbitrarily  fixed  class  to  guide  and  rule, 
and  another  to  be  guided  and  ruled.  He  rejected 
the  overture.  The  old  master,  his  well-meant 
condescensions  slighted,  turned  away  estranged, 
and  justified  himself  in  passively  withholding  that 


THE  FREE 'DMA WS  CASE  IN  EQUITY.       ^ 

simpler  protection  without  patronage  which  any 
one  American  citizen,  however  exalted,  owes  to 
any  other,  however  humble.  Could  the  freedman 
in  the  bitterest  of  those  days  have  consented  to 
throw  himself  upon  just  that  one  old  relation,  he 
could  have  found  a  physical  security  for  himself 
and  his  house  such  as  could  not,  after  years  of 
effort,  be  given  him  by  constitutional  amend- 
ments, Congress,  United  States  marshals,  regi- 
ments of  regulars,  and  ships  of  war.  But  he 
could  not;  the  very  nobility  of  the  civilization 
that  had  held  him  in  slavery  had  made  him  too 
much  a  man  to  go  back  to  that  shelter ;  and  by 
his  manly  neglect  to  do  so  he  has  proved  to  us 
who  once  ruled  over  him  that,  be  his  relative 
standing  among  the  races  of  men  what  it  may,  he 
is  worthy  to  be  free. 

To  be  a  free  man  is  his  still  distant  goal.  Twice 
he  has  been  a  freedman.  In  the  days  of  compul- 
sory reconstruction  he  was  freed  in  the  presence 
of  his  master  by  that  master's  victorious  foe.  In 
these  days  of  voluntary  reconstruction  he  is  vir- 
tually freed  by  the  consent  of  liis  master,  but  the 
master  retaining  the  exclusive  right  to  define  the 
bounds  of  his  freedom.  Many  everywhere  have 
taken  up  the  idea  that  this  state  of  affairs  is  the 
end  to  be  desired  and  the  end  actually  sought  in 
reconstruction  as  handed  over  to  the  States.  I 
do  not  charge  such  folly  to  the  best  intelligence 
of  any  American  community;  but  I  cannot  ignore 


:6       THE  FREEDMAWS  CASE  IN  EQUITY. 

my  own  knowledge  that  the  average  thought  of 
some  regions  rises  to  no  better  idea  of  the  issue. 
The  belief  is  all  too  common  that  the  nation, 
having  aimed  at  a  wrong  result  and  missed,  has 
left  us  of  the  Southern  States  to  get  now  such 
other  result  as  we  think  best.  I  say  this  belief  is 
not  universal.  There  are  those  among  us  who 
see  that  America  has  no  room  for  a  state  of  so- 
ciety which  makes  its  lower  classes  harmless  by 
abridging  their  liberties,  or,  as  one  of  the  favored 
class  lately  said  to  me,  has  "  got  'em  so  they  don't 
give  no  trouble."  There  is  a  growing  number 
who  see  that  the  one  thing  we  cannot  afford  to 
tolerate  at  large  is  a  class  of  people  less  than  citi- 
zens ;  and  that  every  interest  in  the  land  demands 
that  the  freedman  be  free  to  become  in  all  things, 
as  far  as  his  own  personal  gifts  will  lift  and  sus- 
tain him,  the  same  sort  of  American  citizen  he 
would  be  if,  with  the  same  intellectual  and  moral 
calibre,  he  were  white. 

Thus  we  reach  the  ultimate  question  of  fact. 
Are  the  freedman's  liberties  suffering  any  real 
abridgment?  The  answer  is  easy.  The  letter 
of  the  laws,  with  a  few  exceptions,  recognizes 
him  as  entitled  to  every  right  of  an  American 
citizen ;  and  to  some  it  may  seem  unimportant 
that  there  is  scarcely  one  public  relation  of  life 
in  the  South  where  he  is  not  arbitrarily  and  un- 
lawfully compelled  to  hold  toward  the  white  man 
the  attitude  of  an  alien,  a  menial,  and  a  probable 


THE  FREEDMAWS  CASE  IN  EQUITY.       \>j 

reprobate,  by  reason  of  his  race  and  color.  One 
of  the  marvels  of  future  history  will  be  that  it  was 
counted  a  small  matter,  by  a  majority  of  our  na- 
tion, for  six  millions  of  people  within  it,  made  by 
its  own  decree  a  component  part  of  it,  to  be  sub- 
jected to  a  system  of  oppression  so  rank  that 
nothing  could  make  it  seem  small  except  the  fact 
that  they  had  already  been  ground  under  it  for  a 
century  and  a  half. 

Examine  it.  It  proffers  to  the  freedman  a 
certain  security  of  life  and  property,  and  then 
holds  the  respect  of  the  community,  that  dearest 
of  earthly  boons,  beyond  his  attainment.  It  gives 
him  certain  guarantees  against  thieves  and  rob- 
bers, and  then  holds  him  under  the  unearned 
contumely  of  the  mass  of  good  men  and  women. 
It  acknowledges  in  constitutions  and  statutes  his 
title  to  an  American's  freedom  and  aspirations, 
and  then  in  daily  practice  heaps  upon  him  in 
every  public  place  the  most  odious  distinctions, 
without  giving  ear  to  the  humblest  plea  concern- 
ing mental  or  moral  character.  It  spurns  his 
ambition,  tramples  upon  his  languishing  self- 
respect,  and  indignantly  refuses  to  let  him  either 
buy  with  money,  or  earn  by  any  excellence  of  in- 
ner life  or  outward  behavior,  the  most  momentary 
immunity  from  these  public  indignities  even  for 
his  wife  and  daughters.  Need  we  cram  these 
pages  with  facts  in  evidence,  as  if  these  were 
charges  denied  and  requiring  to  be  proven? 
3 


!g        THE  FREEDMAATS  CASE  IN  EQUITY. 

They  are  simply  the  present  avowed  and  de- 
fended state  of  affairs  peeled  of  its  exteriors. 

Nothing  but  the  habit,  generations  old,  of  en- 
during it  could  make  it  endurable  by  men  not  in 
actual  slavery.  Were  we  whites  of  the  South  to 
remain  every  way  as  we  are,  and  our  six  million 
blacks  to  give  place  to  any  sort  of  whites  exactly 
their  equals,  man  for  man,  in  mind,  morals,  and 
wealth,  provided  only  that  they  had  tasted  two 
years  of  American  freedom,  and  were  this  same 
system  of  tyrannies  attempted  upon  them,  there 
would  be  as  bloody  an  uprising  as  this  continent 
has  ever  seen.  We  can  say  this  quietly.  There 
is  not  a  scruple's  weight  of  present  danger. 
These  six  million  freedmen  are  dominated  by 
nine  million  whites  immeasurably  stronger  than 
they,  backed  by  the  virtual  consent  of  thirty  odd 
millions  more.  Indeed,  nothing  but  the  habit 
of  oppression  could  make  such  oppression  pos- 
sible to  a  people  of  the  intelligence  and  virtue 
of  our  Southern  whites,  and  the  invitation  to 
practice  it  on  millions  of  any  other  than  the 
children  of  their  former  slaves  would  be  spurned 
with  a  noble  indignation. 

Suppose,  for  a  moment,  the  tables  turned. 
Suppose  the  courts  of  our  Southern  States,  while 
changing  no  laws  requiring  the  impaneling  of 
jurymen  without  distinction  as  to  race,  etc., 
should  suddenly  begin  to  draw  their  thousands 
of  jurymen  all  black,  and  well-nigh  every  one  of 


THE  FREEDMAN' S  CASE  IN  EQUITY.       jg 

them  counting  not  only  himself,  but  all  his  race, 
better  than  any  white  man.  Assuming  that  their 
average  of  intelligence  and  morals  should  be  not 
below  that  of  jurymen  as  now  drawn,  would  a 
white  man,  for  all  that,  choose  to  be  tried  in  one 
of  those  courts?  Would  he  suspect  nothing? 
Could  one  persuade  him  that  his  chances  of  even 
justice  were  all  they 'should  be,  or  all  they  would 
be  were  the  court  not  evading  the  law  in  order 
to  sustain  an  outrageous  distinction  against  him 
because  of  the  accidents  of  his  birth  ?  Yet  only 
read  white  man  for  black  man,  and  black  man  for 
white  man,  and  that — I  speak  as  an  eye-witness — 
has  been  the  practice  for  years,  and  is  still  so  to- 
day ;  an  actual  emasculation,  in  the  case  of  six 
million  people  both  as  plaintiff  and  defendant,  of 
the  right  of  trial  by  jury. 

In  this  and  other  practices  the  outrage  falls 
upon  the  freedman.  Does  it  stop  there?  Far 
from  it.  It  is  the  first  premise  of  American  prin- 
ciples that  whatever  elevates  the  lower  stratum 
of  the  people  lifts  all  the  rest,  and  whatever  holds 
it  down  holds  all  down.  For  twenty  years,  there- 
fore, the  nation  has  been  working  to  elevate  the 
freedman.  It  counts  this  one  of  the  great  neces- 
sities of  the  hour.  It  has  poured  out  its  wealth 
publicly  and  privately  for  this  purpose.  It  is 
confidently  hoped  that  it  will  soon  bestow  a 
royal  gift  of  millions  for  the  reduction  of  the 
illiteracy  so  largely  shared  by  the  blacks.  Our 


20        THE  FREEDMAWS  CASE  IN  EQUITY. 

Southern  States  are,  and  for  twenty  years  have 
been,  taxing  themselves  for  the  same  end.  The 
private  charities  alone  of  the  other  States  have 
given  twenty  millions  in  the  same  good  cause. 
Their  colored  seminaries,  colleges,  and  normal 
schools  dot  our  whole  Southern  country,  and 
furnish  our  public  colored  schools  with  a  large 
part  of  their  teachers.  All  this  and  much  more 
has  been  or  is  being  done  in  order  that,  for  the 
good  of  himself  and  everybody  else  in  the  land, 
the  colored  man  may  be  elevated  as  quickly  as 
possible  from  all  the  debasements  of  slavery  and 
semi-slavery  to  the  full  stature  and  integrity  of 
citizenship.  And  it  is  in  the  face  of  all  this  that 
the  adherent  of  the  old  regime  stands  in  the  way 
to  every  public  privilege  and  place — steamer 
landing,  railway  platform,  theatre,  concert-hall, 
art  display,  public  library,  public  school,  court- 
house, church,  everything — flourishing  the  hot 
branding-iron  of  ignominious  distinctions.  He 
forbids  the  freedman  to  go  into  the  water  until  he 
is  satisfied  that  he  knows  how  to  swim,  and  for 
fear  he  should  learn  hangs  mill-stones  about  his 
neck.  This  is  what  we  are  told  is  a  small  matter 
that  will  settle  itself.  Yes,  like  a  roosting  curse, 
until  the  outraged  intelligence  of  the  South  lifts 
its  indignant  protest  against  this  stupid  firing  into 
our  own  ranks. 

I  say  the  outraged  intelligence  of  the  South ; 
for  there  are  thousands  of  Southern-born  white 


THE  FREEDMAN'S  CASE  IN  EQUITY.       2I 

men  and  women,  in  the  minority  in  all  these 
places — in  churches,  courts,  schools,  libraries, 
theatres,  concert-halls,  and  on  steamers  and  rail- 
way carriages, — who  see  the  wrong  and  folly  of 
these  things,  silently  blush  for  them,  and  with- 
hold their  open  protests  only  because  their  belief 
is  unfortunately  stronger  in  the  futility  of  their 
counsel  than  in  the  power  of  a  just  cause.  I  do 
not  justify  their  silence;  but  I  affirm  their  sin- 
cerity and  their  goodly  numbers.  Of  late  years, 
when  condemning  these  evils  from  the  platform 
in  Southern  towns,  I  have  repeatedly  found  that 
those  who  I  had  earlier  been  told  were  the  men 
and  women  in  whom  the  community  placed  most 
confidence  and  pride — they  were  the  ones  who, 
when  I  had  spoken,  came  forward  with  warmest 
hand-grasps  and  expressions  of  thanks,  and 
pointedly  and  cordially  justified  my  every 
utterance.  And  were  they  the  young  South  ? 
Not  by  half.  The  gray-beards  of  the  old 
times  have  always  been  among  them,  saying 
in  effect,  not  by  any  means  as  converts,  but 
as  fellow-discoverers,  "  Whereas  we  were  blind, 
now  we  see." 

Another  sort  among  our  good  Southern  people 
make  a  similar  but  feeble  admission,  but  with  the 
time-worn  proviso  that  expediency  makes  a  more 
imperative  demand  than  law,  justice,  or  logic,  and 
demands  the  preservation  of  the  old  order.  Some- 
body must  be  outraged,  it  seems ;  and  if  not  the 


22        THE  FREEDMAWS  CASE  IN  EQUITY. 

freedman,  then  it  must  be  a  highly  refined  and 
enlightened  race  of  people  constantly  offended 
and  grossly  discommoded,  if  not  imposed  upon, 
by  a  horde  of  tatterdemalions,  male  and  female, 
crowding  into  a  participation  in  their  reserved 
privileges.  Now,  look  at  this  plea.  It  is  simply 
saying  in  another  way  that  though  the  Southern 
whites  far  outnumber  the  blacks,  and  though  we 
hold  every  element  of  power  in  greater  degree 
than  the  blacks,  and  though  the  larger  part  of  us 
claim  to  be  sealed  by  nature  as  an  exclusive  up- 
per class,  and  though  we  have  the  courts  com- 
pletely in  our  own  hands,  with  the  police  on  our 
right  and  the  prisons  on  our  left,  and  though  we 
justly  claim  to  be  an  intrepid  people,  and  though 
we  have  a  superb  military  experience,  with  ninety- 
nine  hundredths  of  all  the  military  equipment  and 
no  scarcity  of  all  the  accessories,  yet  with  all  these 
facts  behind  us  we  cannot  make  and  enforce  that 
intelligent  and  approximately  just  assortment  6f 
persons  in  public  places  and  conveyances  on  the 
merits  of  exterior  decency  that  is  made  in  all 
other  enlightened  lands.  On  such  a  plea  are 
made  a  distinction  and  separation  that  not  only 
are  crude,  invidious,  humiliating,  and  tyrannous, 
but  which  do  not  reach  their  ostensible  end  or 
come  near  it ;  and  all  that  saves  such  a  plea  from 
being  a  confession  of  driveling  imbecility  is  its 
utter  speciousness.  It  is  advanced  sincerely;  and 
yet  nothing  is  easier  to  show  than  that  these  dis- 


THE  FREED  MAWS  CASE  IN  EQUITY.       2$ 

tinctions  on  the  line  of  color  are  really  made  not 
from  any  necessity,  but  simply  for  their  own 
sake — to  preserve  the  old  arbitrary  supremacy 
of  the  master  class  over  the  menial  without  re- 
gard to  the  decency  or  indecency  of  appearance 
or  manners  in  either  the  white  individual  or  the 
colored. 

See  its  every-day  working.  Any  colored  man 
gains  unquestioned  admission  into  innumerable 
places  the  moment  he  appears  as  the  menial  at- 
tendant of  some  white  person,  where  he  could 
not  cross  the  threshold  in  his  own  right  as  a  well- 
dressed  and  well-behaved  master  of  himself.  The 
contrast  is  even  greater  in  the  case  of  colored 
women.  There  could  not  be  a  system  which 
when  put  into  practice  would  more  offensively 
condemn  itself.  It  does  more  :  it  actually  creates 
the  confusion  it  pretends  to  prevent.  It  blunts 
the  sensibilities  of  the  ruling  class  themselves. 
It  waives  all  strict  demand  for  painstaking  in 
either  manners  or  dress  of  either  master  or  me- 
nial, and,  for  one  result,  makes  the  average  South- 
ern railway  coach  more  uncomfortable  than  the 
average  of  railway  coaches  elsewhere.  It  prompts 
the  average  Southern  white  passenger  to  find  less 
offense  in  the  presence  of  a  profane,  boisterous,  or 
unclean  white  person  than  in  that  of  a  quiet,  well- 
behaved  colored  man  or  woman  attempting  to 
travel  on  an  equal  footing  with  him  without  a 
white  master  or  mistress.  The  holders  of  the  old 


24       THE  FREEDMAN'S  CASE  IN  EQUITY. 

sentiments  hold  the  opposite  choice  in  scorn.  It 
is  only  when  we  go  on  to  say  that  there  are  re- 
gions where  the  riotous  expulsion  of  a  decent  and 
peaceable  colored  person  is  preferred  to  his  inof- 
fensive company,  that  it  may  seem  necessary  to 
bring  in  evidence.  And  yet  here  again  it  is 
prima  facie  evidence ;  for  the  following  extract 
was  printed  in  the  Selma  (Alabama)  "  Times  "  not 
six  months  ago,1  and  not  as  a  complaint,  but  as  a 
boast : 

"  A  few  days  since,  a  negro  minister,  of  this  city,  boarded  the 
east-bound  passenger  train  on  the  E.  T.,  V.  &  G.  Railway,  and 
took  a  seat  in  the  coach  occupied  by  white  passengers.  Some  of 
the  passengers  complained  to  the  conductor  and  brakemen,  and 
expressed  considerable  dissatisfaction  that  they  were  forced  to 
ride  alongside  of  a  negro.  The  railroad  officials  informed  the 
complainants  that  they  were  not  authorized  to  force  the  colored 
passenger  into  the  coach  set  apart  for  the  negroes,  and  they  would 
lay  themselves  liable  should  they  do  so.  The  white  passengers 
then  took  the  matter  in  their  own  hands  and  ordered  the  ebony- 
hued  minister  to  take  a  seat  in  the  next  coach.  He  positively 
refused  to  obey  orders,  whereupon  the  white  men  gave  him  a 
sound  flogging  and  forced  him  to  a  seat  among  his  own  color  and 
equals.  We  learned  yesterday  that  the  vanquished  preacher  was 
unable  to  fill  his  pulpit  on  account  of  the  severe  chastisement  in- 
flicted upon  him.  Now  [says  the  delighted  editor]  the  query 
that  puzzles  is,  'Who  did  the  flogging ?  '  " 

And  as  good  an  answer  as  we  can  give  is  that 
likely  enough  they  were  some  of  the  men  for 
whom  the  whole  South  has  come  to  a  halt  to  let 
them  get  over  the  "  feelings  engendered  by  the 

1  In  the  summer  of  1884. 


THE  FREEDMAWS  CASE  IN  EQUITY.       2$ 

war."  Must  such  men,  such  acts,  such  senti- 
ments, stand  alone  to  represent  us  of  the  South 
before  an  enlightened  world  ?  No.  I  say,  as  a 
citizen  of  an  extreme  Southern  State,  a  native  of 
Louisiana,  an  ex-Confederate  soldier,  and  a  lover 
of  my  home,  my  city,  and  my  State,  as  well  as  of 
my  country,  that  this  is  not  the  best  sentiment  in 
the  South,  nor  the  sentiment  of  her  best  intelli- 
gence ;  and  that  it  would  not  ride  up  and  down 
that  beautiful  land  dominating  and  domineering 
were  it  not  for  its  tremendous  power  as  the  tra- 
ditional sentiment  of  a  conservative  people.  But 
is  not  silent  endurance  criminal  ?  I  cannot  but 
repeat  my  own  words,  spoken  near  the  scene  and 
about  the  time  of  this  event.  Speech  may  be 
silvern  and  silence  golden  ;  but  if  a  lump  of  gold 
is  only  big  enough,  it  can  drag  us  to  the  bottom 
of  the  sea  and  hold  us  there  while  all  the  world 
sails  over  us. 

The  laws  passed  in  the  days  of  compulsory 
reconstruction  requiring  "  equal  accommoda- 
tions," etc.,  for  colored  and  white  persons  were 
freedmen's  follies.  On  their  face  they  defeated 
their  ends ;  for  even  in  theory  they  at  once  re- 
duced to  half  all  opportunity  for  those  more  rea- 
sonable and  mutually  agreeable  self-assortments 
which  public  assemblages  and  groups  of  passen- 
gers find  it  best  to  make  in  all  other  enlightened 
countries,  making  them  on  the  score  of  conduct, 
dress,  and  price.  They  also  led  the  whites  to 
4 


26       THE  FREEDMAN'S  CASE  IN  EQUITY. 

overlook  what  they  would  have  seen  instantly  had 
these  invidious  distinctions  been  made  against 
themselves :  that  their  offense  does  not  vanish  at 
the  guarantee  against  the  loss  of  physical  com- 
forts. But  we  made,  and  are  still  making,  a  mis- 
take beyond  even  this.  For  years  many  of  us 
have  carelessly  taken  for  granted  that  these  laws 
were  being  carried  out  in  some  shape  that  re- 
moved all  just  ground  of  complaint.  It  is  com- 
mon to  say,  "  We  allow  the  man  of  color  to  go 
and  come  at  will,  only  let  him  sit  apart  in  a  place 
marked  off  for  him."  But  marked  off  how  ?  So 
as  to  mark  him  instantly  as  a  menial.  Not  by 
railings  and  partitions  merely,  which,  raised 
against  any  other  class  in  the  United  States  with 
the  same  invidious  intent,  would  be  kicked  down 
as  fast  as  put  up,  but  by  giving  him  besides,  in 
.every  instance  and  without  recourse,  the  most 
uncomfortable,  uncleanest,  and  unsafest  place ; 
and  the  unsafety,  uncleanness,  and  discomfort  of 
most  of  these  places  are  a  shame  to  any  com- 
munity pretending  to  practice  public  justice.  If 
any  one  can  think  the  freedman  does  not  feel  the 
indignities  thus  heaped  upon  him,  let  him  take 
up  any  paper  printed  for  colored  men's  patronage, 
or  ask  any  colored  man  of  known  courageous 
utterance.  Hear  them  : 

"We  ask  not  Congress,  nor  the  Legislature,  ncr  any  other 
power,  to  remedy  these  evils,  but  we  ask  the  people  among  whom 
we  live.  Those  who  can  remedy  them  if  they  will.  Those  who 


THE  FREEDMAWS  CASE  IN  EQUITY.       2/ 

have  a  high  sense  of  honor  and  a  deep  moral  feeling.  Those 
who  have  one  vestige  of  human  sympathy  left.  .  .  .  Those  are 
the  ones  we  ask  to  protect  us  in  our  weakness  and  ill-treatments. 
...  As  soon  as  the  colored  man  is  treated  by  the  white  man  as 
a  man,  that  harmony  and  pleasant  feeling  which  should  charac^ 
terize  all  races  which  dwell  together,  shall  be  the  bond  of  peace 
between  them." 

Surely  their  evidence  is  good  enough  to  prove 
their  own  feelings.  We  need  not  lean  upon  it 
here  for  anything  else.  I  shall  not  bring  forward 
a  single  statement  of  fact  from  them  or  any  of 
their  white  friends  who,  as  teachers  and  mission- 
aries, share  many  of  their  humiliations,  though 
my  desk  is  covered  with  them.  But  I  beg  to 
make  the  same  citation  from  my  own  experience 
that  I  made  last  June  in  the  far  South.  It  was 
this  :  One  hot  night  in  September  of  last  year  I 
was  traveling  by  rail  in  the  State  of  Alabama. 
At  rather  late  bed-time  there  came  aboard  the 
train  a  young  mother  and  her  little  daughter  of 
three  or  four  years.  They  were  neatly  and  taste- 
fully dressed  in  cool,  fresh  muslins,  and  as  the 
train  went  on  its  way  they  sat  together  very  still 
and  quiet.  At  the  next  station  there  came  aboard 
a  most  melancholy  and  revolting  company.  In 
filthy  rags,  with  vile  odors  and  the  clanking  of 
shackles  and  chains,  nine  penitentiary  convicts 
chained  to  one  chain,  and  ten  more  chained 
to  another,  dragged  laboriously  into  the  com- 
partment of  the  car  where  in  one  corner  sat 
this  mother  and  child,  and  packed  it  full,  and  the 


28        THE  FREEDMAN'S  CASE  IN  EQUITY. 

train  moved  on.  The  keeper  of  the  convicts  told 
me  he  should  take  them  in  that  car  two  hundred 
miles  that  night.  They  were  going  to  the  mines. 
My  seat  was  not  in  that  car,  and  I  staid  in  it  but 
a  moment.  It  stank  insufferably.  I  returned  to 
my  own  place  in  the  coach  behind,  where  there 
was,  and  had  all  the  time  been,  plenty  of  room. 
But  the  mother  and  child  sat  on  in  silence  in  that 
foul  hole,  the  conductor  having  distinctly  refused 
them  admission  elsewhere  because  they  were  of 
African  blood,  and  not  because  the  mother  was, 
but  because  she  was  not,  engaged  at  the  moment 
in  menial  service.  Had  the  child  been  white,  and 
the  mother  not  its  natural  but  its  hired  guardian, 
she  could  have  sat  anywhere  in  the  train,  and  no 
one  would  have  ventured  to  object,  even  had  she 
been  as  black  as  the  mouth  of  the  coal-pit  to 
which  her  loathsome  fellow-passengers  were  being 
carried  in  chains. 

Such  is  the  incident  as  I  saw  it.  But  the  illus- 
tration would  be  incomplete  here  were  I  not 
allowed  to  add  the  comments  I  made  upon  it 
when  in  June  last  I  recounted  it,  and  to  state  the 
two  opposite  tempers  in  which  my  words  were 
received.  I  said :  "  These  are  the  facts.  And 
yet  you  know  and  I  know  we  belong  to  com- 
munities that  after  years  of  hoping  for,  are  at  last 
taking  comfort  in  the  assurance  of  the  nation's 
highest  courts  that  no  law  can  reach  and  stop 
this  shameful  foul  play  until  we  choose  to  enact 


THE  FREEDMAN'S  CASE  IN  EQUITY.       29 

a  law  to  that  end  ourselves.  And  now  the  east 
and  north  and  west  of  our  great  and  prosperous 
and  happy  country,  and  the  rest  of  the  civilized 
world,  as  far  as  it  knows  our  case,  are  standing 
and  waiting  to  see  what  we  will  write  upon  the 
white  page  of  to-day's  and  to-morrow's  history, 
now  that  we  are  simply  on  our  honor  and  on  the 
mettle  of  our  far  and  peculiarly  famed  Southern 
instinct.  How  long,  then,  shall  we  stand  off  from 
such  ringing  moral  questions  as  these  on  the 
flimsy  plea  that  they  have  a  political  value,  and, 
scrutinizing  the  Constitution,  keep  saying,  '  Is  it 
so  nominated  in  the  bond  ?  I  cannot  find  it ;  'tis 
not  in  the  bond.' " 

With  the  temper  that  promptly  resented  these 
words  through  many  newspapers  of  the  neigh- 
boring regions  there  can  be  no  propriety  in 
wrangling.  When  regions  so  estranged  from  the 
world's  thought  carry  their  resentment  no  fur- 
ther than  a  little  harmless  invective,  it  is  but  fair 
to  welcome  it  as  a  sign  of  progress.  If  com- 
munities nearer  the  great  centers  of  thought 
grow  impatient  with  them,  how  shall  we  resent 
the  impatience  of  these  remoter  ones  when  their 
oldest  traditions  are,  as  it  seems  to  them,  ruth- 
lessly assailed]?  There  is  but  one  right  thing  to 
do :  it  is  to  pour  in  upon  them  our  reiterations 
of  the  truth  without  malice  and  without  stint. 

But  I  have  a  much  better  word  to  say.  It  is 
for  those  who,  not  [voiced  by  the  newspapers 


30        THE  FREEDMAN'S  CASE  IN  EQUITY. 

around  them,  showed  both  then  and  constantly 
afterward  in  public  and  private  during  my  two 
days'  subsequent  travel  and  sojourn  in  the  re- 
gion, by  their  cordial,  frequent,  specific  approval 
of  my  words,  that  a  better  intelligence  is  long- 
ing to  see  the  evils  of  the  old  regime  supplanted 
by  a  wiser  and  more  humane  public  sentiment  and 
practice.  And  I  must  repeat  my  conviction  that 
if  the  unconscious  habit  of  oppression  were  not 
already  there,  a  scheme  so  gross,  irrational,  unjust, 
and  inefficient  as  our  present  caste  distinctions 
could  not  find  place  among  a  people  so  generally 
intelligent  and  high-minded.  I  ask  attention  to 
their  bad  influence  in  a  direction  not  often  noticed. 
In  studying,  about  a  year  ago,  the  practice  of 
letting  out  public  convicts  to  private  lessees  to 
serve  out  their  sentences  under  private  manage- 
ment, I  found  that  it  does  not  belong  to  all  our 
once  slave  States  nor  to  all  our  once  seceded 
States.1  Only  it  is  no  longer  in  practice  outside 
of  them.  Under  our  present  condition  in  the 
South,  it  is  beyond  possibility  that  the  individual 
black  should  behave  mischievously  without  offen- 
sively rearousing  the  old  sentiments  of  the  still 
dominant  white  man.  As  we  have  seen  too, 
the  white  man  virtually  monopolizes  the  jury-box. 
Add  another  fact :  the  Southern  States  have  en- 
tered upon  a  new  era  of  material  development. 

1  See  "  The  Convict  Lease  System  in  the  Southern  States,"  in 
this  volume. 


THE  FREEDMAWS  CASE  IN  EQUITY.       ^ 

Now,  if  with  these  conditions  in  force  the  public 
mind  has  been  captivated  by  glowing  pictures  of 
the  remunerative  economy  of  the  convict-lease 
system,  and  by  the  seductive  spectacle  of  mines 
and  railways,  turnpikes  and  levees,  that  every- 
body wants  and  nobody  wants  to  pay  for,  grow- 
ing apace  by  convict  labor  that  seems  to  cost 
nothing,  we  may  almost  assert  beforehand  that 
the  popular  mind  will — not  so  maliciously  as  un- 
reflectingly— yield  to  the  tremendous  temptation 
to  hustle  the  misbehaving  black  man  into  the 
State  prison  under  extravagant  sentence,  and  sell 
his  labor  to  the  highest  bidder  who  will  use  him 
in  the  construction  of  public  works.  For  ignor- 
ance of  the  awful  condition  of  these  penitentiaries 
is  extreme  and  general,  and  the  hasty  half-con- 
scious assumption  naturally  is,  that  the  culprit 
will  survive  this  term  of  sentence,  and  its  fierce 
discipline  "  teach  him  to  behave  himself." 

But  we  need  not  argue  from  cause  to  effect 
only.  Nor  need  I  repeat  one  of  the  many  pain- 
ful rumors  that  poured  in  upon  me  the  moment 
I  began  to  investigate  this  point  The  official 
testimony  of  the  prisons  themselves  is  before  the 
world  to  establish  the  conjectures  that  spring 
from  our  reasoning.  After  the  erroneous  tak- 
ings of  the  census  of  1880  in  South  Carolina 
had  been  corrected,  the  population  was  shown  to 
consist  of  about  twenty  blacks  to  every  thirteen 
whites.  One  would  therefore  look  for  a  prepon- 


32        THE  FREEDMAWS  CASE  IN  EQUITY. 

derance  of  blacks  on  the  prison  lists ;  and  inas- 
much as  they  are  a  people  only  twenty  years  ago 
released  from  servile  captivity,  one  would  not 
be  surprised  to  see  that  preponderance  large. 
Yet,  when  the  actual  numbers  confront  us,  our 
speculations  are  stopped  with  a  rude  shock ;  for 
what  is  to  account  for  the  fact  that  in  1881  there 
were  committed  to  the  State  prison  at  Columbia, 
South  Carolina,  406  colored  persons  and  but  25 
whites  ?  The  proportion  of  blacks  sentenced  to 
the  whole  black  population  was  one  to  every 
1488  ;  that  of  the  whites  to  the  white  population 
was  but  one  to  every  15,644.  In  Georgia  the 
white  inhabitants  decidely  outnumber  the  blacks ; 
yet  in  the  State  penitentiary,  October  20,  1880, 
there  were  115  whites  and  1071  colored;  or  if 
we  reject  the  summary  of  its  tables  and  refer  to 
the  tables  themselves  (for  the  one  does  not  agree 
with  the  other),  there  were  but  102  whites  and 
1083  colored.  Yet  of  52  pardons  granted  in  the 
two  years  then  closing,  22  were  to  whites  and 
only  30  to  blacks.  If  this  be  a  dark  record, 
what  shall  we  say  of  the  records  of  lynch  law  ? 
But  for  them  there  is  not  room  here. 

A  far  pleasanter  aspect  of  our  subject  shows 
itself  when  we  turn  from  courts  and  prisons 
to  the  school-house.  And  the  explanation  is 
simple.  Were  our  educational  affairs  in  the 
hands  of  that  not  high  average  of  the  com- 
munity commonly  seen  in  jury-boxes,  with  their 


THE  FREEDMAN'S  CASE  IN  EQUITY.       33 

transient  sense  of  accountability  and  their  crude 
notions  of  public  interests,  there  would  most 
likely  be  no  such  pleasant  contrast.  But  with 
us  of  the  South,  as  elsewhere,  there  is  a  fairly 
honest  effort  to  keep  the  public-school  interests 
in  the  hands  of  the  State's  most  highly  trained 
intelligence.  Hence  our  public  educational  work 
is  a  compromise  between  the  unprogressive  pre- 
judices of  the  general  mass  of  the  whites  and  the 
progressive  intelligence  of  their  best  minds. 
Practically,  through  the  great  majority  of  our 
higher  educational  officers,  we  are  fairly  con- 
verted to  the  imperative  necessity  of  elevating 
the  colored  man  intellectually,  and  are  beginning 
to  see  very  plainly  that  the  whole  community  is 
sinned  against  in  every  act  or  attitude  of  oppres- 
sion, however  gross  or  however  refined. 

Yet  one  thing  must  be  said.  I  believe  it  is 
v/ise  that  all  have  agreed  not  to  handicap  educa- 
tion with  the  race  question,  but  to  make  a  com- 
plete surrender  of  that  issue,  and  let  it  find  ad- 
justment elsewhere  first  and  in  the  schools  last. 
And  yet,  in  simple  truth  and  justice  and  in  the 
kindest  spirit,  we  ought  to  file  one  exception  for 
that  inevitable  hour  when  the  whole  question 
must  be  met.  There  can  be  no  more  real  justice 
in  pursuing  the  freedman's  children  with  humili- 
ating arbitrary  distinctions  and  separations  in  the 
school-houses  than  in  putting  them  upon  him  in 
other  places.  If,  growing  out  of  their  peculiar 

5 


34       THE  FREEDMAWS  CASE  IN  EQUITY. 

mental  structure,  there  are  good  and  just  reasons 
for  their  isolation,  by  all  means  let  them  be  proved 
and  known ;  but  it  is  simply  tyrannous  to  assume 
them  without  proof.     I  know  that  just  here  looms 
up  the  huge  bugbear  of  Social  Equality.     Our 
eyes  are  filled  with  absurd  visions  of  all  Shanty- 
town  pouring  its  hordes  of  unwashed  imps  into  the 
company  and  companionship  of  our  own  sunny- 
headed  darlings.     What  utter  nonsense  !     As  if 
our  public  schools  had  no  gauge  of  cleanliness, 
decorum,  or  moral  character  !     Social  Equality  ! 
What  a  godsend  it  would  be  if  the  advocates  of 
the  old  Southern  regime  could  only  see  that  the 
color  line  points  straight  in  the  direction  of  social 
equality  by  tending  toward  the  equalization  of 
all  whites  on  one  side  of  the  line  and  of  all  blacks 
on  the  other.     We  may  reach  the  moon  some 
day,  not  social  equality ;  but  the  only  class  that 
really  effects  anything  toward  it  are  the  makers 
and  holders  of  arbitrary  and  artificial  social  dis- 
tinctions interfering  with  society's  natural  self- 
distribution.     Even  the  little  children  everywhere 
are  taught,  and  begin  to  learn  almost  with  their 
ABC,  that  they  will  find,  and  must  be  guided 
by,  the  same  variations  of  the  social  scale  in  the 
public  school  as  out  of  it;  and  it  is  no  small 
mistake  to  put  them  or  their  parents  off  their 
guard  by  this  cheap  separation  on  the  line  of 
color. 

But  some  will  say  this  is  not  a  purely  artificial 


THE  FREEDMAWS  CASE  IN  EQUITY.       35 

distinction.  We  hear  much  about  race  instinct. 
The  most  of  it,  I  fear,  is  pure  twaddle.  It  may 
be  there  is  such  a  thing.  We  do  not  know.  It 
is  not  proved.  And  even  if  it  were  established, 
it  would  not  necessarily  be  a  proper  moral  guide. 
We  subordinate  instinct  to  society's  best  interests 
as  apprehended  in  the  light  of  reason.  If  there 
is  such  a  thing,  it  behaves  with  strange  malignity 
toward  the  remnants  of  African  blood  in  indi- 
viduals principally  of  our  own  race,  and  with 
singular  indulgence  to  the  descendants  of — for 
example — Pocahontas.  Of  mere  race  feeling  we 
all  know  there  is  no  scarcity.  Who  is  stranger  to 
it  ?  And  as  another  man's  motive  of  private  pre- 
ference no  one  has  a  right  to  forbid  it  or  require 
it.  But  as  to  its  being  an  instinct,  one  thing  is 
plain :  if  there  is  such  an  instinct,  so  far  from 
excusing  the  malignant  indignities  practiced  in 
its  name,  it  furnishes  their  final  condemnation  ; 
for  it  stands  to  reason  that  just  in  degree  as  it  is 
a  real  thing  it  will  take  care  of  itself. 

It  has  often  been  seen  to  do  so,  whether  it  is 
real  or  imaginary.  I  have  seen  in  New  Orleans 
a  Sunday-school  of  white  children  every  Sunday 
afternoon  take  possession  of  its  two  rooms  imme- 
diately upon  their  being  vacated  by  a  black  school 
of  equal  or  somewhat  larger  numbers.  The 
teachers  of  the  colored  school  are  both  white 
and  black,  and  among  the  white  teachers  are 
young  ladies  and  gentlemen  of  the  highest  social 


36        THE  FREEDMAWS  CASE  IN  EQUITY. 

standing.  The  pupils  of  the  two  schools  are 
alike  neatly  attired,  orderly,  and  in  every  respect 
inoffensive  to  each  other.  I  have  seen  the  two 
races  sitting  in  the  same  public  high-school 
and  grammar-school  rooms,  reciting  in  the  same 
classes  and  taking  recess  on  the  same  ground  at 
the  same  time,  without  one  particle  of  detriment 
that  any  one  ever  pretended  to  discover,  although 
the  fiercest  enemies  of  the  system  swarmed  about 
it  on  every  side.  And  when  in  the  light  of  these 
observations  I  reflect  upon  the  enormous  educa- 
tional task  our  Southern  States  have  before  them, 
the  inadequacy  of  their  own  means  for  perform- 
ing it,  the  hoped-for  beneficence  of  the  general 
Government,  the  sparseness  with  which  so  much 
of  our  Southern  population  is  distributed  over 
the  land,  the  thousands  of  school  districts  where, 
consequently,  the  multiplication  of  schools  must 
involve  both  increase  of  expense  and  reductions 
of  efficiency,  I  must  enter  some  demurrer  to  the 
enforcement  of  the  tyrannous  sentiments  of  the 
old  regime  until  wise  experiments  have  estab- 
lished better  reasons  than  I  have  yet  heard  given. 
What  need  to  say  more?  The  question  is 
answered.  Is  the  freedman  a  free  man  ?  No. 
We  have  considered  his  position  in  a  land  whence 
nothing  can,  and  no  man  has  a  shadow  of  right 
to  drive  him,  and  where  he  is  being  multiplied  as 
only  oppression  can  multiply  a  people.  We  have 
carefully  analyzed  his  relations  to  the  finer  and 


THE  FREED  MAN''  S  CASE  IN  E  Q  UIT  Y.       37 

prouder  race,  with  which  he  shares  the  owner- 
ship and  citizenship  of  a  region  large  enough  for 
ten  times  the  number  of  both.  Without  accept- 
ing one  word  of  his  testimony,  we  have  shown 
that  the  laws  made  for  his  protection  against  the 
habits  of  suspicion  and  oppression  in  his  late 
master  are  being  constantly  set  aside,  not  for 
their  defects,  but  for  such  merit  as  they  possess. 
We  have  shown  that  the  very  natural  source  of 
these  oppressions  is  the  surviving  sentiments  of 
an  extinct  and  now  universally  execrated  institu- 
tion ;  sentiments  which  no  intelligent  or  moral 
people  should  harbor  a  moment  after  the  admis- 
sion that  slavery  was  a  moral  mistake.  We  have 
shown  the  outrageousness  of  these  tyrannies  in 
some  of  their  workings,  and  how  distinctly  they 
antagonize  every  State  and  national  interest  in- 
volved in  the  elevation  of  the  colored  race.  Is 
it  not  well  to  have  done  so  ?  For,  I  say  again, 
the  question  has  reached  a  moment  of  special 
importance.  The  South  stands  on  her  honor 
before  the  clean  equities  of  the  issue.  It  is  no 
longer  whether  constitutional  amendments,  but 
whether  the  eternal  principles  of  justice,  are  vio- 
lated. And  the  answer  must — it  shall — come 
from  the  South.  And  it  shall  be  practical.  It 
will  not  cost  much.  We  have  had  a  strange  ex- 
perience :  the  withholding  of  simple  rights  has 
cost  much  blood ;  such  concessions  of  them  as 
we  have  made  have  never  yet  cost  a  drop.  The 


38        THE  FREEDMAWS  CASE  IN  EQUITY. 

answer  is  coming.  Is  politics  in  the  way?  Then 
let  it  clear  the  track  or  get  run  over,  just  as  it 
prefers.  But,  as  I  have  said  over  and  over  to  my 
brethren  in  the  South,  I  take  upon  me  to  say  again 
here,  that  there  is  a  moral  and  intellectual  intelli- 
gence there  which  is  not  going  to  be  much  longer 
beguiled  out  of  its  moral  right  of  way  by  questions 
of  political  punctilio,  but  will  seek  that  plane  of 
universal  justice  and  equity  which  it  is  every 
people's  duty  before  God  to  seek,  not  along  the 
line  of  politics, — God  forbid  ! — but  across  it  and 
across  it  and  across  it  as  many  times  as  it  may 
lie  across  the  path,  "until  the  whole  people  of 
every  once  slave-holding  State  can  stand  up  as 
one  man,  saying,  "  Is  the  freedman  a  free  man  ?  " 
and  the  whole  world  shall  answer,  "  Yes." 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


39 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

I.    "A    TIME   TO   SPEAK." 

IN  Tivoli  Circle,  New  Orleans,  from  the  cen- 
ter and  apex  of  its  green,  flowery  mound  an 
immense  column  of  pure  white  marble  rises  in 
the  fair  unfrowning  majesty  of  Grecian  propor- 
tions high-  up  above  the  city's  house-tops  into 
the  dazzling  sunshine  and  fragrant  gales  of  the 
Delta.  On  its  dizzy  top  stands  the  bronze  figure 
of  one  of  the  world's  greatest  captains. 

He  is  all  alone.  Not  one  of  his  mighty  lieu- 
tenants stands  behind  or  beside  him  or  below  at 
the  base  of  his  pillar.  Even  his  horse  is  gone. 
Only  his  good  sword  remains,  hanging  motion- 
less in  its  scabbard.  His  arms  are  folded  on 
that  breast  that  never  knew  fear  or  guile,  and  his 
calm,  dauntless  gaze  meets  the  morning  sun  as  it 
rises,  like  the  new  prosperity  of  the  land  he  loved 
and  served  so  masterly,  above  the  far  distant 
battle-fields  where  so  many  thousands  of  his 
ragged  gray  veterans  lie  in  the  sleep  of  fallen 
heroes. 

Great  silent  one !  who  lived  to  see  his  stand- 
6  4i 


42  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

ard  furled  and  hung  in  the  halls  of  the  con- 
queror; to  hear  the  victor's  festal  jubilations  ;  to 
behold  a  redistribution  of  rights  riding  over  the 
proud  traditions  of  his  people,  and  all  the  pain- 
ful fruits  of  a  discomfited  cause  shaken  to  the 
ground;  to  hear  and  see  the  tempestuous  and 
ofttimes  bloody  after-strife  between  the  old  ideas 
and  the  new ;  to  see,  now  on  one  side,  now  on 
the  other,  the  terms  of  his  own  grand  surrender 
and  parole  forgotten  or  ignored;  to  have  his 
ear  filled  with  the  tirades  and  recriminations  of 
journals  and  parties,  and  the  babble  of  the 
unthinking  million;  to  note  the  old  creeds 
changing,  and  to  come,  himself,  it  may  be, — God 
knows, — to  respect  beliefs  that  he  had  once 
counted  follies  ;  and  yet,  withal,  never,  before  the 
world  that  had  set  him  aside  but  could  not  forget 
him,  never  to  quail,  never  to  wince,  never  to 
redden  with  anger,  never  to  wail  against  man  or 
fate,  or  seek  the  salve  of  human  praise  or  con- 
solation; but  silently  amid  the  clamor  of  the 
times  to  stand  and  wait,  making  patience  royal, 
with  a  mind  too  large  for  murmuring,  and  a  heart 
too  great  to  break,  until  a  Messenger  as  silent  as 
his  bronze  effigy  beckoned  Robert  E.  Lee  to  that 
other  land  of  light  and  flowers  where  man's 
common  inheritance  of  error  is  hidden  in  the 
merit  of  his  honest  purpose,  and  lost  in  the 
Divine  charity. 

So  this  monument,  lifted  far  above  our  daily 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


43 


strife  of  narrow  interests  and  often  narrower 
passions  and  misunderstandings,  becomes  a 
monument  to  more  than  its  one  great  and  rightly 
loved  original.  It  symbolizes  our  whole  South's 
better  self;  that  finer  part  which  the  world  not 
always  sees;  unaggressive,  but  brave,  calm, 
thoughtful,  broad-minded,  dispassionate,  sincere, 
and,  in  the  din  of  boisterous  error  round  about 
it,  all  too  mute.  It  typifies  that  intelligence  to 
which  the  words  of  a  late  writer  most  truly  apply 
when  he  says  concerning  the  long,  incoherent 
discussion  of  one  of  our  nation's  most  perplexing 
questions,  "Amid  it  all  the  South  has  been 
silent." 

But  the  times  change — have  changed.  What- 
ever the  merit  or  fault  of  earlier  reticence,  this 
mute,  firm-rooted  figure,  with  sheathed  sword 
and  folded  arms,  must  yield  a  step,  not  back- 
ward, but  forward.  "  Where  it  has  been  silent  it 
now  should  speak."  Nay,  already  it  speaks ;  and 
the  blessing  of  all  good  men  should  rest  on  this 
day  if  it  reveals  the  Silent  South  laying  off  its 
unsurrendered  sword,  leaving  brawlers  to  their 
brawls,  and  moving  out  upon  the  plain  of 
patient,  friendly  debate,  seeking  to  destroy  only 
error,  and  to  establish  only  truth  and  equity  and 
a  calm  faith  in  their  incomparable  power  to  solve 
the  dark  problem's  of  the  future. 

Within  the  last  few  months  the  voice  of 
temperate  discussion  has  been  heard  in  well-nigh 


44  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

every  quarter  of  our  Southern  States  on  themes 
that  have  scarcely  been  handled  with  patience 
and  clemency  these  forty  years.  True,  there  has 
been  some  clamor,  throwing  stones,  and  casting 
dust;  but  calmer  utterances  have  come  from 
Memphis,  from  Louisville,  Chattanooga,  Lynch- 
burg,  Atlanta,  Charleston,  Dallas,  and  far  San 
Angelo ;  some  on  one  side,  some  on  the  other, 
of  the  debate,  professing  in  common  at  least 
three  quiet  convictions :  that  recrimination  and 
malignment  of  motive  are  the  tactics  of  those 
who  have  no  case;  that  "the  truth  is  worth  more 
than  any  man's  opinion ;  and  that  the  domina- 
tion of  right  is  the  end  we  are  bound  to  seek. 

Under  these  convictions  the  following  pages 
are  written ;  written  in  deprecation  of  all  section- 
alism ;  with  an  admiration  and  affection  for  the 
South,  that  for  justice  and  sincerity  yield  to  none; 
in  a  spirit  of  faithful  sonship  to  a  Southern 
State;  written  not  to  gratify  sympathizers,  but  to 
persuade  opponents;  not  to  overthrow,  but  to 
convince;  and  begging  that  all  harshness  of 
fact  or  vehemence  of  statement  be  attributed 
entirely  to  the  weight  of  the  interests  under 
debate. 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


45 


II.    POINTS    OF   AGREEMENT. 

It  is  pleasant  to  note  how  much  common 
ground  is  occupied  by  the  two  sides  in  this  con- 
test of  opinions.  By  both  it  is  recognized  that 
the  fate  of  the  national  Civil  Rights  bill  has  not 
decided  and  cannot  dismiss  the  entire  question 
of  the  freedman's  relations ;  but  that  it  puts 
upon  trial  in  each  Southern  State  a  voluntary 
reconstruction  which  can  never  be  final  till  it  has 
established  the  moral  equities  of  the  whole  case. 
Says  one  opponent,  imputing  his  words  to  a  per- 
sonified South,  "  Leave  this  problem  to  my 
working  out.  I  will  solve  it  in  calmness  and 
deliberation,  without  passion  or  prejudice,  and 
with  full  regard  for  the  unspeakable  equities  it 
holds."  l  Says  Mr.  Watterson's  paper,  in  Louis- 
ville, "  We  believe  there  is  a  general  desire 
among  the  people  of  the  South,  that  the  negro 
shall  have  all  the  rights  which  a  citizen  of  the 
United  States,  whatever  be  the  color  of  his  skin, 
is  entitled  to,  but  we  know  of  no  method  to 
argue  away  or  force  down  what  may  be  called 
the  caste  of  color.  If  we  did  ...  or  if  anybody 
else  did,  the  dark  problem  as  to  the  future  of 
this  unfortunate  race  would  be  more  quickly  and 
more  easily  solved.  None  more  earnestly  than 
the  Courier-Journal  desires  to  see  this  question 
happily  settled." 

1  "In  Plain  Black  and  White."     April  CENTURY,  1885. 


46 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


Is  not  this  progress  ?  It  seems  scarce  a  matter 
of  months  since  we  were  saying  the  question  was 
dead  and  should  be  buried.  Now  it  rises  to 
demand  a  wider  grave,  which  both  the  writers 
quoted  admit  it  must  have,  though  one  thinks 
nobody  knows  how  to  dig  it,  and  another  insists 
it  must  be  dug  without  cutting  away  any  more 
ground. 

But  the  common  field  of  assertion  and  admis- 
sion broadens  as  we  move  on.  On  this  side  it 
has  been  carefully  demonstrated  that,  not  from 
Emancipation  or  Enfranchisement,  or  anything 
else  in  or  of  the  late  war,  or  of  Reconstruction, 
but  from  our  earlier  relation  to  the  colored  man 
as  liis  master,  results  our  view  of  him  as  natu- 
rally and  irrevocably  servile;  and  that  hence 
arises  our  proneness  to  confuse  his  social  with 
his  civil  relations,  to  argue  from  inferiority  of 
race  a  corresponding  inferiority  of  his  rights,  and 
to  infer  that  they  fall,  therefore,  justly  under  our 
own  benevolent  domination  and,  at  times,  even 
our  arbitrary  abridgment.  The  point  is  made 
that  these  views,  as  remnants  of  that  slavery 
which,  we  all  admit,  has  of  right  perished,  ought 
to  perish  with  it;  and  the  fact. is  regretted  that 
in  many  parts  of  the  South  they  nevertheless 
still  retain  such  force — though  withal  evidently 
weakening — that  the  laws  affirming  certain  human 
rights  discordant  to  the  dominant  race  are  some- 
times openly  evaded  and  sometimes  virtually  suf- 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


47 


focated  under  a  simulated  acceptance  of  their 
narrowest  letter.  How  plainly  we  feel  the  date 
of  this  discussion  to  be  1884-85 — not  earlier — 
when  we  hear  this  evasion,  once  so  hotly  denied, 
admitted  freely,  nay,  with  emphasis,  to  be  a 
"matter  of  record,  and,  from  the  Southern 
standpoint,  mainly  a  matter  of  reputation." 

And  there  are  yet  other  points  of  agreement. 
As  one  who  saw  our  great  Reconstruction  agony 
from  its  first  day  to  its  last  in  one  of  the  South's 
most  distracted  States  and  in  its  largest  city,  with 
his  sympathies  ranged  upon  the  pro-Southern 
side  of  the  issue,  and  his  convictions  drifting  irre- 
sistibly to  the  other,  the  present  writer  affirms  of 
his  knowledge,  in  the  initial  paper  of  this  debate, 
that  after  we  had  yielded  what  seemed  to  us  all 
proper  deference  to  our  slaves'  emancipation  and 
enfranchisement,  there  yet  remained  our  invinci- 
ble determination — seemingly  to  us  the  funda- 
mental condition  of  our  self-respect — never  to 
yield  our  ancient  prerogative  of  holding  under 
our  own  discretion  the  colored  man's  status,  not 
as  a  freedman,  not  as  a  voter,  but  in  his  daily  walk 
as  a  civilian.  This  attitude  in  us,  with  our  per- 
sistent mistaking  his  civil  rights  for  social  claims, 
this  was  the  tap-root  of  the  whole  trouble.  For 
neither  would  his  self-respect  yield ;  and  not  be- 
cause he  was  so  unintelligent  and  base,  but  be- 
cause he  was  as  intelligent  and  aspiring  as,  in  his 
poor  way,  he  was,  did  he  make  this  the  cause  of 


48 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


political  estrangement.  This  estrangement — full 
grown  at  its  beginning — was  the  carpet-bagger's 
and  scallawag's  opportunity.  They  spring  and 
flourish  wherever,  under  representative  govern- 
ment, gentility  makes  a  mistake,  however  sincere, 
against  the  rights  of  the  poor  and  ignorant.  Is 
this  diagnosis  of  the  Reconstruction  malady  con- 
tested by  the  other  side?  Nay,  it  is  confirmed. 
The  South,  it  tells  us,  "accepted  the  emancipation 
and  enfranchisement  of  her  slaves  as  the  legitimate 
results  of  war  that  had  been  fought  to  a  conclu- 
sion. These  once  accomplished,  nothing  more 
was  possible.  *  Thus  far  and  no  farther/  she  said 
to  her  neighbors  in  no  spirit  of  defiance,  but  with 
quiet  determination.  In  her  weakest  moments, 
when  her  helpless  people  were  hedged  about  by 
the  unthinking  bayonets  of  her  conquerors,  she 
gathered  them  for  resistance  at  this  point.  Here 
she  defended  everything  that  a  people  should 
hold  dear.  There  was  little  proclamation  of  her 
purpose,"  etc. 

Surely  hope  is  not  folly,  as  to  this  Southern 
question,  when  such  admissions  come  from  this 
direction.  What  salutary  clearing  of  the  ground 
have  we  here !  Our  common  assertion  in  the 
South  has  long  been  that  the  base  governments 
of  the  Reconstruction  period  were  overturned  by 
force  because  they  had  become  so  corrupt  that 
they  were  nothing  but  huge  machines  for  the 
robbery  of  the  whole  public,  a  tangle  of  low  po- 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


49 


litical  intrigues  that  no  human  intelligence  could 
unravel;  that  our  virtue  and  intelligence  sought 
not  the  abridgment  of  any  man's  rights,  but 
simply  the  arrest  of  bribery  and  robbery ;  that 
this  could  be  done  only  by  revolution  because 
of  the  solid  black  vote,  cast,  we  said,  without  ra- 
tionality at  the  behest  of  a  few  scoundrels  who 
kept  it  solid  by  playing  upon  partisan  catch- 
words, or  by  promise  of  spoils.  And  especially 
among  those  whose  faith  is  strongest  in  our  old 
Southern  traditions,  it  always  was  and  is,  to-day, 
sincerely  believed  that  this  was  the  whole  issue. 
It  was  this  profession  that  averted  the  inter- 
ference of  Federal  arms.  It  was  upon  this  pro- 
fession that  the  manliest  youth  and  intelligence 
of  New  Orleans  went  forth  to  stake  their  lives, 
and  some  to  pour  out  their  hearts'  blood  in  inter- 
necine war  on  the  levee  of  their  dear  city.  Sad 
sight  to  those  who  knew  that  this  was  not  the 
whole  matter — that  the  spring  of  trouble  lay  yet 
deeper  down.  To  such  it  brings  no  small  or 
selfish  gladness  to  hear,  at  length, — if  one  may 
without  offence  coin  a  term, — to  hear  Southern 
traditionists  admitting  a  truth  which  the  South 
has  denied  with  sincere  indignation  ten  thousand 
times, — that  in  all  that  terrible  era  the  real,  fun- 
damental issue  was  something  else  which  the 
popular  Southern  mind  was  hardly  aware  of. 
"  Barely" — say  these — "barely  did  the  whispered 
word  that  bespoke  her  [the  South's]  resolution 
7 


50  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

catch  the  listening  ears  of  her  sons;  but  for  all 
this,  the  victorious  armies  of  the  North,  had  they 
been  rallied  again  from  their  homes,  could  not  have 
have  enforced  and  maintained  among  this  disarmed 
people  the  policy  indicated  in  the  Civil  Rights  bill." 
This  was  the  point  at  which,  they  say,  and  they  say 
truly,  the  South  "gathered  for  resistance." 

Let  us  be  sure  these  so  gallantly  spoken  words 
are  not  misunderstood.  There  were  two  policies 
indicated  in  the  Civil  Rights  bill :  the  policy  of 
asserting  congressional  jurisdiction  in  the  case; 
and  the  policy  of  legalizing,  at  all,  such  rights  as 
it  declared.  One  raised  a  question  of  State 
rights;  the  other,  of  Human  rights.  But  the 
State-rights  issue,  by  itself, — the  mere  question 
of  whence  the  legislation  should  emanate,  could 
never  of  itself  make  fierce  strife.  Any  State 
could  have  settled  that  point  by  simply  stepping 
ahead  of  Congress  with  the  same  legislation. 
No ;  the  irreconcilable  difference  was  not  as  to 
whence  but  as  to  what  the  law  should  be.  The 
essential  odium  of  the  bill  lay  not  in  its  origin,  but 
in  its  definition  of  the  black  man's  rights.  In- 
deed, the  main  object  of  most  of  those  who  have 
written  on  the  other  side  in  the  present  contro- 
versy has  been  to  assert  the  resolution  never  to 
recognize  the  freedman's  rights  upon  that  defini- 
tion of  them.  In  the  meantime  a  gentle  move- 
ment of  thought,  that  sounds  no  trumpet  before  it, 
is  gradually  pressing  toward  that  very  recognition 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


III.    THE   STICKING    POINT. 

But  now  that  we  have  clearly  made  out  ex- 
actly what  this  immovable  hostility  is,  the  ques- 
tion follows  —  and  half  the  nation  are  asking  it  to- 
day with  perplexed  brows  —  why  is  it  ?  Yet  the 
answer  is  simple.  Many  white  people  of  the 
South  sincerely  believe  that  the  recognition  of 
rights  proposed  in  the  old  Civil  Rights  bills  or  in 
"  The  Freedman's  Case  in  Equity  "  would  pre- 
cipitate a  social  chaos.  They  believe  Civil  Rights 
means  Social  Equality.  This  may  seem  a  trans- 
parent error,  but  certainly  any  community  in  the 
world  that  believed  it,  would  hold  the  two  ideas 
in  equal  abomination  ;  and  it  is  because  of  the 
total  unconsciousness  and  intense  activity  of  this 
error  at  the  South,  and  the  subtle  sense  of  un- 
safety  that  naturally  accompanies  it,  —  it  is  be- 
cause of  this,  rather  than  for  any  lack  of  clear- 
ness in  its  statement  of  the  subject,  that  the  ar- 
ticle on  "The  Freedman's  Case  in  Equity"  is  so 
grossly  misinterpreted  even  by  some  who  un- 
doubtedly wish  to  be  fair.  That  this  is  the  true 
cause  of  the  misinterpretation  is  clear  in  the  fact 
that  from  the  first  printing  of  the  article  until  now 
the  misconstruction  has  occurred  only  among 
those  whose  thinking  still  runs  in  the  grooves  of 
the  old  traditions. 

Nothing  in  that  paper  touches  or  seeks  to 
touch  the  domain  of  social  privileges.  The  stand- 


5  2  THE  SILENT  SO UTH. 

ing  of  the  magazine  in  which  it  appears  is  guar- 
antee against  the  possibility  of  the  paper  contain- 
ing any  such  insult  to  the  intelligence  of  enlight- 
ened society.  Social  equality  is  a  fool's  dream. 
The  present  writer  wants  quite  as  little  of  it  as  the 
most  fervent  traditionist  of  the  most  fervent  South. 
The  North,  the  West,  the  East,  and  the  rest  of  the 
intelligent  world,  want  quite  as  little  of  it  as  the 
South  wants.  Social  equality  can  never  exist 
where  a  community,  numerous  enough  to  assert 
itself,  is  actuated,  as  every  civilized  community 
is,  by  an  intellectual  and  moral  ambition.  No 
form  of  laws,  no  definition  of  rights,  from  Anarchy 
to  Utopia,  can  bring  it  about.  The  fear  that  this 
or  that  change  will  produce  it  ought  never  to  be 
any  but  a  fool's  fear.  And  yet  there  is  this  to  be 
added ;  that  no  other  people  in  America  are  doing 
so  much  for  social  equality  as  those  who,  while 
they  warmly  charge  it  upon  others,  are  them- 
selves thrusting  arbitrary  and  cheap  artificial  dis- 
tinctions into  the  delicate  machinery  of  society's 
self-distribution  as  it  revolves  by  the  power  of  our 
natural  impulses,  and  of  morality,  personal  in- 
terest, and  personal  preferences.  This,  of  course, 
is  not  the  intention,  and  even  these  persons  re- 
tard only  incidentally,  unawares  and  within  nar- 
row limits,  nature's  social  distributions,  while 
taking  diligent  and  absolutely  needless  pains  to 
hold  apart  two  races  which  really  have  no  social 
affinity  at  all. 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


53 


Do  we  charge  any  bad  intention  or  conscious 
false  pretense  ?  Not  at  all !  They  are  merely 
making  the  double  mistake  of  first  classing  as 
personal  social  privileges  certain  common  imper- 
sonal rights  of  man,  and  then  turning  about  and 
treating  them  as  rights  definable  by  law — which 
social  amenities  are  not  and  cannot  be. 

For  the  sake  of  any  who  might  still  misunder- 
stand, let  us  enlarge  here  a  moment.  The  family 
relation  has  rights.  Hence  marital  laws  and  laws 
of  succession.  But  beyond  the  family  circle 
there  are  no  such  things  as  social  rights ;  and 
when  our  traditionists  talk  about  a  too  hasty 
sympathy  having  "  fixed  by  enactment "  the 
negro's  social  and  civil  rights  they  talk — unwise- 
ly. All  the  relations  of  life  that  go  by  imper- 
sonal right  are  Civil  relations.  All  that  go  by 
personal  choice  are  Social  relations.  The  one  is 
ail  of  right,  it  makes  no  difference  who  we  are ; 
the  other  is  all  of  choice,  and  it  makes  all  the 
difference  who  we  are ;  and  it  is  no  little  fault 
against  ourselves  as  well  as  others,  to  make  con- 
fusion between  the  two  relations.  For  the  one 
we  make  laws ;  for  the  other  every  one  consults 
his  own  pleasure ;  and  the  law  that  refuses  to 
protect  a  civil  right,  construing  it  a  social  privi- 
lege, deserves  no  more  regard  than  if  it  should 
declare  some  social  privilege  to  be  a  civil  right. 
Social  choice,  civil  rights;  but  a  civil  privilege,  in 
America,  is  simply  heresy  against  both  our  great 


5  4  THE  SILENT  SO  UTH. 

national  political  parties  at  once.  Now,  "  The 
Freedman's  Case  in  Equity  "  pleads  for  not  one 
thing  belonging  to  the  domain  of  social  rela- 
tions. Much  less  the  family  relation;  it  does 
not  hint  the  faintest  approval  of  any  sort  of 
admixture  of  the  two  bloods.  Surely  nothing 
that  a  man  can  buy  a  ticket  for  anonymously  at 
a  ticket-seller's  hand-hole  confers  the  faintest 
right  to  even  a  bow  of  recognition  that  any  one 
may  choose  to  withhold.  But  what  says  the 
other  side  ?  "  The  South  will  never  adopt  the 
suggestion  of  the  social  intermingling^  of  the  two 
races."  So  they  beg  the  question  of  equity,  and 
suppress  a  question  of  civil  right  by  simply  mis- 
calling it  "social  intermingling";  thus  claiming 
for  it  that  sacredness  from  even  the  law's  control 
which  only  social  relations  have,  and  the  next 
instant  asserting  the  determination  of  one  race 
to  "control  the  social  relations,"  so-called,  of  two. 
Did  ever  champions  of  a  cause  with  blanker  sim- 
plicity walk  into  a  sack  and  sew  up  its  mouth  ? 
Not  only  thus,  but  from  within  it  they  announce 
a  doctrine  that  neither  political  party  in  our 
country  would  venture  to  maintain  ;  for  no  party 
dare  say  that  in  these  United  States  there  is 
any  room  for  any  one  class  of  citizens  to  fasten 
arbitrarily  upon  any  other  class  of  citizens  a  civil 
status  from  which  no  merit  of  intelligence,  virtue, 
or  possessions  can  earn  an  extrication.  We  have 

1  Italicized  only  here. 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


55 


a  country  large  enough  for  all  the  unsociality  any- 
body may  want,  but  not  for  incivility  either  by  or 
without  the  warrant  of  law. 

"What  history  shows,"  says  a  sound  little 
book  lately  printed,  "  is  that  rights  are  safe  only 
when  guaranteed  against  all  arbitrary  power  and 
all  class  and  personal  interest."  Class  rule  of 
any  sort  is  bad  enough,  even  with  the  consent  of 
the  ruled  class  ;  un-American  enough.  But  the 
domination  of  one  fixed  class  by  another  without 
its  consent,  is  Asiatic.  And  yet  it  is  behind  this 
error,  of  Asian  antiquity  and  tyranny,  this  arbi- 
trary suppression  of  impartial,  impersonal  civil 
rights,  that  we  discover  our  intelligent  adver- 
saries in  this  debate  fortified,  imagining  they  have 
found  a  strong  position  !  "  Neither  race  wants 
it,  "  says  one ;  alluding  to  that  common,  undi- 
vided participation  in  the  enjoyment  of  civil 
rights,  for  which  the  darker  race  has  been  lifting 
one  long  prayer  these  twenty  years,  and  which 
he  absurdly  miscalls  "  social  intermingling." 
"  The  interest,  as  the  inclination,  of  both  races  is 
against  it,"  he  adds.  "  Here  the  issue  is  made 
up." 

But  he  mistakes.  The  issue  is  not  made  up 
here  at  all.  It  is  not  a  question  of  what  the  race 
wants,  but  of  what  the  individual  wants  and  has 
a  right  to.  Is  that  question  met  ?  No.  Not  a 
line  has  been  written  to  disprove  the  individual 
freedman's  title  to  these  rights ;  but  pages,  to 


56  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

declare  that  his  race  does  not  want  them  and 
shall  not  have  them  if  it  does.  Mark  the  contra- 
diction. It  does  not  want  them — it  shall  not 
have  them !  Argument  unworthy  of  the  nursery; 
yet  the  final  essence  of  all  the  other  side's  utter- 
ances. They  say  the  colored  race  wants  a  par- 
ticipation in  public  rights  separate  from  the 
whites  ;  and  that  anyhow  it  has  got  to  take  that 
or  nothing ;  "  The  white  and  black  races  in  the 
South  mustY  walk  apart."  One  writer  justifies 
this  on  the  belief  of  a  natal  race  instinct ;  but 
says  that  if  there  were  no  such  thing  the  South 
"  would,  by  every  means  in  its  power,  so  strengthen 
the  race  prejudice l  that  it  would  do  the  work  and 
hold  the  stubbornness  and  strength  of  instinct." 
Gould  any  one  more  distinctly  or  unconsciously 
waive  the  whole  question  of  right  and  wrong  ? 
Yet  this  is  the  standpoint  on  which  it  is  proposed 
to  meet  the  freedmen's  case  in  equity.  Under  the 
heat  of  such  utterances  how  the  substance  melts 
out  of  their  writer's  later  proposition  for  the 
South  to  solve  the  question  "  without  passion  or 
prejudice  and  with  full  regard  for  the  unspeak- 
able equities  it  holds." 

It  is  not  the  Louisville  gentlemen  who  are 
found  at  this  untenable  standpoint.  They  admit 
the  desirability  of  extirpating  the  state  of  affairs 
condemned  by  "The  Freedman's  Case  in  Equity," 
and  merely  ask  with  a  smile,  "  in  what  manner 

1  Italicized  only  here. 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH.  57 

the  writer  expects  that  evil  to  disappear  before 
high-sounding  imperatives,"  etc.  As  to  that  we 
leave  others  on  that  side  to  give  the  answer; 
hear  it,  from  Atlanta  :  "  Clear  views,  clear  state- 
ment, and  clear  understanding  are  the  demands 
of  the  hour.  Given  these,  the  common  sense 
and  courage  of  the  American  people  will  make 
the  rest  easy." 

IV.    CIVIL   RIGHT   NOT   SOCIAL   CHOICE. 

Let  us  then  make  our  conception  of  the  right 
and  wrong  of  this  matter  unmistakable.  Social 
relations,  one  will  say,  are  sacred.  True,  but 
civil  rights  are  sacred,  also.  Hence  social  rela- 
tions must  not  impose  upon  civil  rights  nor  civil 
rights  impose  upon  social  relations.  We  must 
have  peace.  But  for  peace  to  be  stable  we  must 
have  justice.  Therefore,  for  peace,  we  must  find 
that  boundary  line  between  social  relations  and 
civil  rights,  from  which  the  one  has  no  warrant 
ever  to  push  the  other;  and,  for  justice,  this 
boundary  must  remain  ever  faithfully  the  same, 
no  matter  whose  the  social  relations  are  on  one 
side  or  whose  the  civil  rights  are  on  the  other. 

Suppose  a  case.  Mr.  A.  takes  a  lady,  not  of 
his  own  family,  to  a  concert.  Neither  one  is 
moved  by  compulsion  or  any  assertion  of  right 
on  the  part  of  the  other.  They  have  chosen 
each  other's  company.  Their  relation  is  social. 
It  could  not  exist  without  mutual  agreement. 


58  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

They  are  strangers  in  that  city,  however,  and  as 
they  sit  in  the  thronged  auditorium  and  look 
around  them,  not  one  other  soul  in  that  house, 
so  far  as  they  can  discern,  has  any  social  relation 
with  them.  But  see,  now,  how  impregnable  the 
social  relation  is.  That  pair,  outnumbered  a 
thousand  to  one,  need  not  yield  a  pennyweight 
of  social  interchange  with  any  third  person  unless 
they  so  choose.  Nothing  else  in  human  life  is  so 
amply  sufficient  to  protect  itself  as  are  social 
relations.  Provided  one  thing, — that  the  law  will 
protect  every  one  impartially  in  his  civil  rights, 
one  of  the  foremost  of  which  is  that  both  men 
and  laws  shall  let  us  alone  to  our  personal  social 
preferences.  If  any  person,  no  matter  who  or 
what  he  is,  insists  on  obtruding  himself  upon 
this  pair  in  the  concert-hall  he  can  only  succeed 
in  getting  himself  put  out.  Why  ?  Because  he 
is  trying  to  turn  his  civil  right-to-be-there  into  a 
social  passport.  And  even  if  he  make  no  per- 
sonal advances,  but  his  behavior  or  personal  con- 
dition is  so  bad  as  to  obtrude  itself  offensively 
upon  others,  the  case  is  the  same ;  the  mistake 
and  its  consequences  are  his.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  should  Mr.  A.  and  his  companion  demand 
the  expulsion  of  this  third  person  when  he  had 
made  no  advances  and  had  encroached  no  more 
on  their  liberty  than  they  had  on  his,  demanding 
it  simply  on  the  ground  that  he  was  their  social 
or  intellectual  inferior  or  probably  had  relatives 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


59 


who  were,  then  the  error,  no  matter  who  or  what 
he  is,  would  be  not  his,  but  theirs,  and  it  would 
be  the  equally  ungenteel  error  of  trying  to  turn 
their  social  choice  into  a  civil  right;  and  it  would 
be  simply  increasing  the  error  and  its  offensive- 
ness,  for  them  to  suggest  that  he  be  given  an 
equally  comfortable  place  elsewhere  in  the  house 
providing  it  must  indicate  his  inferiority.  There 
is  nothing  comfortable  in  ignominy,  nor  is  it  any 
evidence  of  high  mind  for  one  stranger  to  put  it 
upon  another. 

Now,  the  principles  of  this  case  are  not  dis- 
turbed by  any  multiplication  of  the  number  of 
persons  concerned,  or  by  reading  for  concert- 
hall  either  theatre  or  steamboat  or  railway  station 
or  coach  or  lecture-hall  or  street  car  or  public 
library,  or  by  supposing  the  social  pair  to  be 
English,  Turk,  Jap,  Cherokee,  Ethiopian,  Mexi- 
can, or  "American."  But  note  the  fact  that, 
even  so,  Mr.  A.  and  his  companion's  social  rela- 
tions are,  under  these  rulings,  as  safe  from  inva- 
sion as  they  were  before ;  nay,  even  safer,  inas- 
much as  the  true  distinction  is  made  publicly 
clearer,  between  the  social  and  the  civil  relations. 
Mr.  A.  is  just  as  free  to  decline  every  sort  of 
unwelcome  social  advance,  much  or  little,  as  ever 
he  was ;  and  as  to  his  own  house  or  estate  may 
eject  any  one  from  it,  not  of  his  own  family  or  a 
legal  tenant,  and  give  no  other  reason  than  that 
it  suits  him  to  do  so.  Do  you  not  see  it  now, 


6o  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

gentlemen  of  the  other  side  ?  Is  there  anything 
new  in  it?  Is  it  not  as  old  as  truth  itself?  Hon- 
estly, have  you  not  known  it  all  along  ?  Is  it 
not  actually  the  part  of  good  breeding  to  know 
it?  You  cannot  say  no.  Then  why  have  you 
charged  us  with  proposing  "  to  break  down  every 
distinction  between  the  races,"  and  "  to  insist  on 
their  intermingling  in  all  places  and  in  all  rela- 
tions," when  in  fact  we  have  not  proposed  to 
disturb  any  distinction  between  the  races  which 
nature  has  made,  or  molest  any  private  or  per- 
sonal relation  in  life,  whatever  ?  Why  have  you 
charged  us  with  "  moving  to  forbid  all  further 
assortment  of  the  races,"  when  the  utmost  we 
have  done  is  to  condemn  an  arbitrary  assortment 
of  the  races,  crude  and  unreasonable,  by  the 
stronger  race  without  the  consent  of  the  weaker, 
and  in  places  and  relations  where  no  one,  exalted 
or  lowly,  has  any  right  to  dictate  to  another 
because  of  the  class  he  belongs  to  ?  We  but 
turn  your  own  words  to  our  use  when  we  say 
this  battery  of  charges  "  is  as  false  as  it  is  infam- 
ous." But  let  that  go. 

Having  made  it  plain  that  the  question  has 
nothing  to  do  with  social  relations,  we  see  that  it 
is,  and  is  only,  a  question  of  indiscriminative  civil 
rights.  This  is  what  "  The  Freedman's  Case  in 
Equity  "  advocates  from  beginning  to  end,  not  as 
a  choice  which  a  race  may  either  claim  or  dis- 
claim, but  as  every  citizen's  individual  yet  im- 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH.  6 1 

personal  right  until  he  personally  waives  or  for- 
feits it.  The  issue,  we  repeat,  is  not  met  at  all 
by  the  assertion  that  "  Neither  race  wants  it." 
There  is  one  thing  that  neither  race  wants,  but 
even  this  is  not  because  either  of  them  is  one 
race  or  another,  but  simply  because  they  are 
members  of  a  civilized  human  community.  It  is 
that  thing  of  which  our  Southern  white  people 
have  so  long  had  such  an  absurd  fear.;  neither 
race,  or  in  other  words  nobody,  wants  to  see  the 
civil  rewards  of  decency  in  dress  and  behavior 
usurped  by  the  common  herd  of  clowns  and 
ragamuffins.  But  there  is  another  thing  that  the 
colored  race  certainly  does  want :  the  freedom 
for  those  of  the  race  who  can  to  earn  the  indis- 
criminative  and  unchallenged  civil — not  social — 
rights  of  gentility  by  the  simple  act  of  being 
genteel.  This  is  what  we  insist  the  best  in- 
telligence of  the  South  is  willing — in  the  interest 
of  right,  and  therefore  of  both  races — to  accord. 
But  the  best  intelligence  is  not  the  majority,  and 
the  majority,  leaning  not  upon  the  equities,  but 
the  traditional  sentiments  of  the  situation,  charge 
us  with  "  theory  "  and  "sentiment "  and  give  us 
their  word  for  it  that  "  Neither  race  wants  it." 

Why,  that  is  the  very  same  thing  we  used  to 
say  about  slavery !  Where  have  these  traditionists 
been  the  last  twenty  years  ?  Who,  that  lived  in 
the  South  through  those  days,  but  knows  that 
the  darker  race's  demand  from  the  first  day  of 


62  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

the  Reconstruction  era  to  its  last,  was,  "  If  you 
will  not  give  us  undivided  participation  in  civil 
rights,  then  and  in  that  case  you  must  give  us 
equal  separate  enjoyment  of  them";  and  from 
the  close  of  Reconstruction  to  this  day  the  only 
change  in  its  expression  has  been  to  turn  its  im- 
perative demand  into  a  supplication.  This  was 
the  demand,  this  is  the  supplication  of  American 
citizens  seeking  not  even  their  civil  rights  entire, 
but  their  civil  rights  mutilated  to  accommodate 
not  our  public  rights  but  our  private  tastes. 
And  how  have  we  responded  ?  Has  the  separate 
accommodation  furnished  them  been  anywhere 
nearly  equal  to  ours  ?  Not  one  time  in  a  thou- 
sand. Has  this  been  for  malice  ?  Certainly  not. 
But  we  have  unconsciously — and  what  people  in 
our  position  would  not  have  made  the  same  over- 
sight?— allowed  ourselves  to  be  carried  off  the 
lines  of  even  justice  by  our  old  notion  of  every 
white  man  holding  every  negro  to  a  menial 
status. 

Would  our  friends  on  the  other  side  of  the  dis- 
cussion say  they  mean  only,  concerning  these 
indiscriminative  civil  rights,  "  Neither  race  wants 
them  now  "  ?  This  would  but  make  bad  worse. 
For  two  new  things  have  happened  to  the  col- 
ored race  in  these  twenty  years ;  first,  a  natural 
and  spontaneous  assortment  has  taken  place 
within  the  race  itself  along  scales  of  virtue  and 
intelligence,  knowledge  and  manners ;  so  that  by 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH.  63 

no  small  fraction  of  their  number  the  wrong  of 
treating  the  whole  race  alike  is  more  acutely  felt 
than  ever  it  was  before ;  and,  second,  a  long,  bit- 
ter experience  has  taught  them  that  "equal 
accommodations,  but  separate  "  means,  generally, 
accommodations  of  a  conspicuously  ignominious 
inferiority.  Are  these  people  opposed  to  an 
arrangement  that  would  give  them  instant  re- 
lease from  organized  and  legalized  incivility  ? — 
For  that  is  what  a  race  distinction  in  civil  rela- 
tions is  when  it  ignores  intelligence  and  decorum. 

V.    CALLING   THE   WITNESSES. 

There  is  another  way  to  settle  this  question 
of  fact.  One  side  in  this  debate  advocates  indis- 
criminative  civil  rights ;  the  other,  separate — 
racial  civil  rights.  It  is  not  to  be  doubted  that 
our  opponents  have  received  many  letters  from 
white  men  and  women  full  of  commendation  and 
thanks  for  what  they  have  written.  Such,  too, 
has  been  the  present  writer's  experience.  Such 
testimonials  poured  in  upon  him  daily  for  four 
months,  from  east,  west,  north,  and  south.  But 
how  about  the  colored  race?  Have  they  written 
him,  begging  him  to  desist  because  "  Neither 
race  wants"  the  equities  he  pleads  for?  The 
pages  of  this  magazine  are  precious,  but  we  beg 
room  for  a  few  extracts  from  colored  correspond- 
ents' letters,  each  being  from  a  separate  letter  and 
no  letter  from  any  colored  person  whom  the  pres- 


64  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

ent  writer  has  ever  seen  or  known.  One  letter  ends, 
"  May  all  the  spirits  that  aid  justice,  truth,  and 
right  constantly  attend  you  in  your  effort"  An- 
other, "  I  hope  that  you  will  continue  the  work 
you  have  begun,  and  may  God  bless  you."  An- 
other, "Accept  this,  dear  sir,  as  the  thanks  of  the 
colored  people  of  this  city."  Another  begins, 
"  I  am  a  negro.  In  behalf  of  the  negroes  and  in 
behalf  of  equitable  fair  dealing  on  the  prin- 
ciple of  giving  a  dollar's  worth  for  a  dollar,  with- 
out any  possible  reference  to  social  matters,  per- 
mit me  to  tender  you  my  sincere  thanks,"  etc. 
Says  another,  "  The  judicious  fairness  with  which 
you  have  treated  our  case  renders  your  thesis 
worthy  of  bur  adoption  as  a  Bill  of  Rights."  A 
letter  of  thanks  from  a  colored  literary  club 
sr  *s,  "...  We  thank  you  for  your  recognition 
of  our  capacity  to  suffer  keenly  under  the  indig- 
nities we  are  made  to  endure."  A  similar  society 
in  another  town  sent  a  verbal  expression  of 
thanks  by  its  president  in  person.  (Followed 
since  by  its  committee's  formal  resolution  orna- 
mentally written  and  mounted.)  In  Louisville 
a  numerous  impromptu  delegation  of  colored 
citizens  called  upon  the  writer  and  tendered  a 
verbal  address  of  thanks.  Another  letter  says, 
"  If  the  people  of  the  South  will  only  regard 
your  article  in  the  same  spirit  as  I  believe  it 
was  intended,  then  I  know,  sir,  great  and  endur- 
ing good  will  be  accomplished."  In  Arkansas, 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH.  65 

a  meeting  of  colored  people,  called  to  express 
approval  of  the  article  on  "  The  Freedman's  Case 
in  Equity,"  passed  a  resolution  pronouncing  its 
ideas  "  consonant  with  true  religion  and  en- 
lightened civilization,"  etc.  Not  one  word  of 
adverse  criticism,  written  or  printed,  has  come 
to  him  from  a  person  of  color.  Has  the  same 
race  given  "  In  Plain  Black  and  White,"  or 
"  The  Freedman's  Case  in  Reality,"  or  any  of 
the  less  dignified  mass  of  matter  on  that  side 
of  the  question,  a  like  cordial  ratification  ?  Or 
has  only  Mr.  Jack  Brown  sent  in  his  congratu- 
lation ? l 


1  The  Selma  "  Times,"  quoted  in  "  The  Freedman's  Case  in 
Equity  "  as  rejoicing  in  the  flogging  of  a  colored  preacher  on  a 
railway  train  for  not  leaving  the  passenger  coach  when  ordered 
out  by  irresponsible  ruffians,  has  since  published  a  letter  purpclh 
ing  to  come  from  one  "Jack  Brown,  colored,"  of  Columbia, 
South  Carolina.  The  letter  denounces  the  present  writer  as  one 
of  the  sort  "  that  has  brought  on  all  the  trouble  between  the 
white  and  colored  people  of  the  South.  I  do  not  know  his 
initials  or  address,"  it  continues,  "or  I  would  address  him  in 
person,  as  I  am  anxious  to  test  his  sincerity"  f  "Now,"  says  the 
Selma  "  Times,' '  "  the  above  article  bears  every  imprint  of  honesty 
and  truthfulness.  We  don't  believe  any  one  but  a  sharp  negro 
could  have  written  or  did  write  it.  The  handwriting,  the  loose 
grammar,  the  postmark  on  the  envelope,  all  mark  it  as  a  genuine 
document  coming  fron  the  man  it  purports  to  have  come  from. 
Not  only  is  this  true  of  such  external  marks  as  we  have  named, 
but  so  is  it  likewise  of  its  internal,  essential  substance.  It  sounds 
as  if  it  could*have*been  thought  out  and  written  by  a  negro  only. 

f  So  italicized  originally. 
9 


66  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

But  it  may  be  asked,  may  not  a  great  many 
individuals,  and  even  some  clubs,  impromptu 
delegations  and  public  meetings  called  for  the 
purpose,  approve  certain  declarations  and  yet  the 
great  mass  of  a  people  not  sanction  them  ?  Then 
let  us  go  one  step  farther.  There  are,  it  is  said, 
eighty — some  say  a  hundred — journals  published 
in  this  country  by  colored  men.  They  look  to 

We  cannot  conceive  of  a  white  man's  putting  himself  so  thor- 
oughly into  the  place  of  a  negro,  mentally,  as  to  have  executed 
such  a  thing  as  a  forgery.  We  shall  find  out  if  there  is  such  a 
negro  in  Columbia,  S.  C.,  as  Brown,  and  secure  other  proofs 
that  he  wrote  it,  because  we  know  Mr.  Cable  and  others  are  sure 
to  challenge  its  authenticity.  We  confidently  expect  to  be  fully 
prepared  to  convince  the  most  skeptical. 

"  The  negro  is  right.  Those  of  his  race  who  have  any  sense 
cannot  expect  what  Mr.  Cable  would  give  them,  do  not  expect 
it,  and  would  be  unhappy  and  uncomfortable  if,  in  any  way,  it 
could  be  forced  upon  them." 

So  if  Jack  Brown,  colored,  were  a  real  person,  nothing  could 
be  easier  than  to  find  him.  Writing  from  a  small  inland  city, 
getting  through  one  hundred  and  seventy-five  words  of  his  letter 
before  making  a  grammatical  slip,  a  colored  man  in  sympathy 
with  the  tritest  sentiment  of  the  dominant  race,  and  with  a  taste 
for  public  questions, — such  a  man  could  not  be  hid,  much  less 
overlooked,  in  Columbia.  But  on  the  present  writer's  desk  lies 
his  own  letter  to  Mr.  Jack  Brown,  colored,  stamped  "  Return  to 
the  writer,"  after  having  lain  in  the  Columbia  post-office  for 
nearly  a  month,  unclaimed.  An  exhaustive  search  and  inquiry 
amongst  the  people  of  both  races  by  a  white  gentleman  resident 
on  the  spot,  fails  to  find  any  "Jack  Brown"  except — to  quote 
the  gentleman's  letter, — "  a  poor,  illiterate  fellow,  who  cannot 
read  or  write  his  name,"  and  who,  instead  of  being  "twenty- 
seven  years  of  age,"  is — to  quote  another  letter — "  an  aged 
man." 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


67 


the  colored  race  for  the  great  bulk-  of  their 
readers  and  subscribers.  Hence  they  are  bound 
to  be  in  large  degree  the  organs  of  popular 
thought  among  the  reading  part,  at  least,  of  that 
people.  But  these  papers  are  a  unit  for  the  ideas 
set  forth  in  "The  Freedmaris  Case  in  Equity." 
Now,  to  believe  the  other  side  we  should  have  to 
make  two  impossible  assumptions  ;  that  among  a 
people  treated  rigorously  as  one  race,  compacted 
by  a  common  status,  the  intelligent  and  com- 
paratively refined  part  numerous  enough  to  send 
— in  spite  of  its  poverty — twenty  thousand  students 
to  normal  schools  and  colleges  and  to  support 
eighty  newspapers,  this  portion,  moreover,  asso- 
ciated with  the  less  intelligent  portion  more 
cordially  in  every  interest  than  two  such  classes 
are  amongst  any  other  people  in  the  world  unless 
it  be  the  Jews — that  such  a  lump  of  leaven  as 
this  has  no  power  to  shape  the  views  of  the 
rest  on  matters  of  common  public  right !  Such 
a  thing  may  be  credible  on  some  other  planet, 
not  on  this.  And  the  second  impossible  assump- 
tion :  That  the  intelligent  and  sensitive  portions 
of  a  people  shall  submit  to  an  ignominious  muti- 
lation of  their  public  rights  because  the  unin- 
telligence  of  their  race  chooses  (?)  to  submit  to  it. 
This  assumption  is  a  crime  against  common 
justice;  the  other  is  a  crime  against  common 
sense.  It  is  simply  a  mistake  that  "  the  assort- 
ment of  the  races  which  has  been  described 


68  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

as    shameful    and    unjust  .  .  .   commands    the 
hearty  assent  of  both." 

True,  our  traditionist  friends,  who  think  they 
believe  it,  are  glad  to  take  the  witness-stand  and 
testify ;  but  surely  some  of  them  should  be  law- 
yer enough  to  know  that  when  they  say  the  col- 
ored race  shall  not  have  the  other  thing  in  any 
event,  their  testimony  as  to  which  the  colored 
race  prefers  is  of  no  further  account.  At  Atlanta, 
they  are  equally  unfortunate  in  another  witness. 
If  the  Georgia  State  Commissioner  of  Public 
Education  will  allow  the  personal  mention  from 
one  who  has  met  and  admires  him,  we  may  say 
that  throughout  the  United  States  he  has  won  the 
high  regard  and  praise  of  the  friends  of  public 
education  for  the  exceptional  progress  he — a  man 
of  the  old  South — has  made  in  unlearning  our 
traditional  Southern  prejudices.  He  stands  a 
noble,  personal  refutation  of  the  superficial  notion 
that  the  world  must  look  to  the  young  South, 
only,  for  progressive  ideas  of  human  right  among 
us.  May  be  it  was  easy  to  make  the  mistake  of 
calling  this  admirable  gentleman  to  testify  that 
"  neither  race  wants  it."  But  see  how  quickly 
Commissioner  Orr  provokes  the  reader  to  dis- 
miss him,  too,  from  the  witness-stand  :  Speaking 
of  mixed  schools,  which,  he  says,  "  both  races 
would  protest  against" — but  which,  mark  it, 
"The  Freedman's  Case  in  Equity"  does  not  ask 
to  have  forced  upon  any  community  or  forced 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


69 


by  either  race  upon  the  other  anywhere — Mr. 
Orr  says,  "  I  am  so  sure  of  the  evils  that  would 
come  from  mixed  schools  that,  even  if  they  were 
possible,  I  would  see  the  whole  educational  sys- 
tem swept  away  before  I  would  see  them  estab- 
lished." 

Ah !  gentlemen,  you  are  not  before  a  Con- 
gressional investigating  committee  that  gets  Re- 
publican facts  from  Republican  witnesses  and 
Democratic  facts  from  Democratic  witnesses,  and 
then  makes  two  reports.  You  are  before  the 
judgment-seat  of  the  world's  intelligence ;  and 
if  you  cannot  bring  for  evidence  of  a  people's 
feelings  their  own  spontaneous  and  habitual  ex- 
pressions to  those  who  think  with  them ;  and, 
for  the  establishment  of  facts,  the  unconscious  or 
unwilling  testimony  of  your  opponents,  then  it  is 
high  time  you  were  taking  your  case  out  of  this 
court.1  As  for  us  we  can  prove  all  we  need 
prove  by  the  gentlemen  themselves. 

1  They  might  easily  have  brought  in  colored  school  teachers. 
Many  of  these  favor  separate  colored  schools,  for  the  obvious 
reason  that  those  are  the  only  schools  they  may  teach  in.  They 
do  bring  in  just  two  witnesses  from  a  side  avowedly  opposed  to 
them;  but  it  is  not  our  side,  either.  One  is  the  late  Bishop 
Haven,  of  whom  we  shall  speak  presently.  The  other,  a  young 
white  woman  on  a  railway  train,  who — forbidden  to  enjoy  her 
civil  rights  and  her  peculiar  social  preferences  at  the  same  time — 
threw  away  a  civil  right  to  retain  the  social  preference ;  which 
was  her  business,  not  ours,  and  proves  nothing  whatever  for  or 
against  anybody  else ;  but  whose  expression  of  pride  at  being 
mistaken  for  a  quadroon  proves  her  an  extremely  silly  person. 


•JQ  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

Once  only  does  the  opposite  side  bring  for- 
ward the  actual  free  utterance  of  a  colored  man 
professing  to  express  a  sentiment  of  his  race ; 
well  nigh  a  magazine  column  of  "  negro  elo- 
quence "  and  adulation  poured  upon  a  confer- 
ence of  applauding  "  Bishops  and  Brethren " 
because  of  the  amazing  fact  that  when  in  the 
neighboring  vestry-room,  he  had  "  thoughtlessly 
asked  "  the  governor  of  the  State  if  he  could  get 
a  drink,  that  magnate  sent  for  and  handed  him  a 
glass  of  water !  Unlucky  testimony  !  which  no 
candid  mind  can  deny  is  an  elaborate  confession 
of  surprised  delight  at  being  treated  with  indis- 
criminative  civility.  We  are  told,  however,  that 
it  is  offered  simply  to  show  the  affectionate  "  feel- 
ing of  that  people  toward  their  white  neighbors." 
Thus  a  display  of  affection  is  utilized  to  give  a 
color  of  justice  to  the  mutilation  of  just  such 
equal  rights  as  this  one  whose  unexpected  recog- 
nition called  forth  this  display  of  affection  !  So 
they  go  round  and  round  their  tether. 

They  summon  her  for  "  the  sole  object "  of  suggesting  that  she 
and  such  as  agree  with  her — which  lets  us  out  as  plainly  as  it 
does  the  other  side — are  "  unsafe  as  advisers  and  unfair  as  wit- 
nesses." Certainly  they  are. 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH.  jl 

VI.    GUNS    THAT   SHOOT    BACKWARD. 

Our  demonstration  is  complete ;  but  there  fol- 
lows a  short  corollary  :  While  the  colored  peo- 
ple always  did  and  still  do  accept  with  alacrity 
an  undivided  enjoyment  of  civil  rights  with  the 
white  race  wherever  cordially  offered,  they  never 
mistake  them  for  social  privileges,  nor  do  they 
ever  attempt  to  use  them  to  compel  social  inter- 
course. We  might  appeal  to  the  everyday  street- 
car experience  of  hundreds  of  thousands  of  resi- 
dents in  New  Orleans  and  other  Southern  cities; 
or  to  the  uniform  clearness  with  which  civil  rights 
are  claimed  and  social  advances  disclaimed  in  the 
many  letters  from  colored  men  and  women  that 
are  this  moment  before  the  writer.  But  we  need 
not.  We  need  refer  only  to  our  opponents  in 
debate,  who  bring  forward,  to  prove  their  own 
propositions,  a  set  of  well-known  facts  that  turn 
and  play  Balaam  to  their  Balak.  Hear  their 
statement :  "  They  " — the  colored  people — "  meet 
the  white  people  in  all  the  avenues  of  business. 
They  work  side  by  side  with  the  white  bricklayer 
or  carpenter  in  perfect  accord  and  friendliness. 
When  the  trowel  or  hammer  is  laid  aside,  the 
laborers  part,  each  going  his  own  way.  Any 
attempt  to  carry  the  comradeship  of  the  day  into 
private  life  would  be  sternly  resisted  by  both 
parties  in  interest." 

We  prove,  by  the  other  side's  own  arguments, 


7 2  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

that  the  colored  people  always  accept  the  com- 
mon enjoyment  of  civil  rights  and  never  con- 
found civil  with  social  relations.  But  in  just  one 
phase  of  life  there  is  a  conspicuous  exception ; 
and  an  exception  especially  damaging  to  the  tra- 
ditional arguments  of  our  opponents.  And  who 
furnishes  our  evidence  this  time  ?  Themselves 
again.  We  allude  to  the  church  relation.  We 
are  asked  to  confront  the  history  of  an  effort 
made,  they  say,  many  times  over,  by  Bishop 
Haven  and  the  Northern  Methodist  church  gen- 
erally, soon  after  the  late  war ;  an  effort  to  abolish 
racial  discrimination  in  the  religious  worship  of 
the  church  in  the  South  composed  of  Northern 
whites  and  Southern  blacks;  its  constant  and 
utter  failure ;  and  the  final  separation  of  those 
churches  into  two  separate  conferences,  and  into 
separate  congregations  wherever  practicable. 
These  facts  are  brought  forward  to  prove  the 
existence  of  race  instinct,  intending  to  justify  by 
race  instinct  the  arbitrary  control,  by  the  whites 
of  the  relations  between  the  two  races ;  and  the 
conclusion  is  sanguinely  reached  at  a  bound,  that 
the  only  explanation  of  these  churches'  separa- 
tion on  the  color  line  is  each  race's  race  instinct, 
"  that  spoke  above  the  appeal  of  the  bishop  and 
dominated  the  divine  influences  that  pulsed  from 
pew  to  pew."  But  the  gentlemen  are  too  eager. 
What  in  their  haste  they  omit  to  do  is  to  make 
any  serious  search  at  all  for  a  simpler  explana- 


THE  SILENT  SObTH. 


73 


tion.  And  how  simple  the  true  explanation  is  ! 
Bishop  Haven  and  his  colleagues,  if  rightly  re- 
ported, ought  to  have  known  they  would  fail. 
They  were  attempting  under  acute  disadvantages 
what  none  of  the  Protestant  churches  in  America, 
faithfully  as  they  have  striven  for  it,  has  ever  been 
able  extensively  to  accomplish.  That  is,  to  get 
high  and  low  life  to  worship  together.  The  char- 
acter of  much  ritual  worship  and  of  nearly  all 
non-ritual  worship  naturally  and  properly  takes 
for  its  standard  the  congregation's  average  intel- 
ligence. But  this  good  process  of  assortment, 
unless  held  in  by  every  proper  drawback,  flies 
off  to  an  excess  that  leaves  the  simple  and  un- 
learned to  a  spiritual  starvation  apparently  as  bad 
as  that  from  which  non-ritual  worship,  especially, 
professes  to  revolt.  Bishop  Dudley,  of  Kentucky, 
has  lately  laid  his  finger  upon  this  mischief  for 
us  with  great  emphasis.  But,  moreover,  as  in 
society,  so  in  the  church,  this  intellectual  standard 
easily  degenerates  toward  a  standard  of  mere 
manners  or  station.  Thus  the  gate  is  thrown 
wide  open  to  the  social  idea,  and  presently  not 
our  Dorcases  only,  but  at  times  our  very  bishops 
and  elders,  are  busy  trying  to  make  the  social 
relation  co-extensive  with  the  church  relation. 
With  what  result?  Little,  generally,  save  the 
bad  result  of  congregations  trimming  themselves 
down  to  fit  the  limitations  of  social  fellowship. 
See  the  case  cited.  Here  were  whites,  cultured, 

10 


74  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

and  counting  themselves,  at  least,  as  good  as 
the  best  in  the  land ;  and  here  was  an  ignorant, 
superstitious  race  of  boisterous  worshipers  just 
emerged  from  slavery ;  one  side  craving  spiritual 
meat,  the  other  needing  spiritual  milk,  and  both 
sides  beset  by  our  prevalent  American  error  that 
social  intimacy  is  one  of  the  distinct  earnings  of 
church  membership.  Of  course  they  separated. 
It  is  but  a  dwarfed  idea  of  the  church  relation 
that  cramps  it  into  the  social  relation.  The 
church  relation  is  the  grandest  fraternity  on 
earth.1  Social  relations  are  good  and  proper, 
but  can  the  social  relation  grasp  all  these  condi- 
tions in  one  embrace  ?  Can  any  one  social  circle 
span  from  the  drawing-room  to  the  stable,  from 
the  counting-room  or  professional  desk  to  the 
kitchen,  from  the  judge's  bench  to  the  tailor's 
and  cobbler's,  from  the  prince's  crown  to  the 
pauper's  bowl  ?  Yet  without  any  social  intimacy 
the  prince  may  be  the  pauper's  best  friend,  and 
even  the  pauper  the  prince's  ;  and  the  church  re- 
lation ought  to  be  so  wide  and  high  that  all  these 
ranks  might  kneel  abreast  in  it  in  common  wor- 
ship, and  move  abreast  in  it  in  perfect,  active,  co- 
laboring  fraternity  and  regard,  gathering  any  or 
every  social  circle  into  its  noble  circumference, 
never  pressing  one  injuriously  upon  another,  and 
above  all  things  never  letting  in  the  slender  but 

1  "  There  is  neither  Jew  nor  Greek,  there  is  neither  bond  nor 
free,  there  is  neither  male  nor  female."     Gal.  iii.  28. 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


75 


mischievous  error  of  confusing  Christian  fra- 
ternity with  social  equality.  Yet  the  high  and 
low  nigh  all  our  country  over  are  kept  apart  in 
divine  worship  by  just  this  error  or  the  fear  of  it. 
Fifty  thousand  Bishop  Havens  could  not,  until 
they  had  overthrown  the  domination  of  this  mis- 
take, get  the  lofty  and  the  lowly  to  worship  to- 
gether. How  could  they  but  separate  ?  And 
the  dragging  in  of  a  race  instinct  to  account  for 
the  separation  is  like  bringing  a  pole  to  knock 
down  strawberries.  Other  things  will,  but  a  be- 
lief in  instinct  will  not,  keep  the  races  apart. 
Look  at  the  West  Indies.  But  not  even  mis- 
cegenation— may  the  reader  forgive  us  the  dis- 
gusting word — could  have  saved  such  a  scheme 
from  failure. 

The  gentlemen  prove  absolutely  nothing  for 
their  case,  but  much  against  it.  For  here  is 
shown  by  actual  experiment  that  even  where 
there  is  not  of  necessity  a  social  relation,  yet 
when  the  social  idea  merely  gets  in  by  mistake 
of  both  classes,  the  effect  will  not  be  social  con- 
fusion, but  a  spontaneous  and  willing  separation 
along  the  strongest  lines  of  social  cleavage.  The 
log — the  church — will  not  split  the  wedge — the 
social  impulse ;  but  the  wedge  will  split  the  log. 
The  uncultured,  be  they  white  or  black,  in  North 
or  South,  will  break  away  on  one  side  with  even 
more  promptness  and  spontaneity  than  the  cul- 
tured on  the  other,  and  will  recoil,  moreover,  to 


76 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


a  greater  distance  than  is  best  for  any  one  con- 
cerned. Thus  far  are  we  from  having  the  least 
ground  to  fear  from  the  blacks  that  emptiest  of 
phantasms,  social  aggression.  Thus  far  are  we 
from  needing  for  the  protection  of  social  order 
any  assumption  of  race  instinct.  And  so  do  the 
advocates  of  our  traditional  sentiments  continually 
establish  the  opposite  of  what  they  seek  to  prove. 
They  cite,  again,  to  establish  this  assumption 
of  race  instinct,  the  spontaneous  grouping  to- 
gether of  colored  people  in  such  social  or  semi- 
social  organizations  as  Masonic  lodges,  military 
companies,  etc.  But  there  is  no  proscription  of 
whites  in  the  lodges  of  colored  Odd-fellows  or 
Masons.  In  Georgia,  for  example,  the  law  re- 
quires the  separation  of  the  races  in  military  com- 
panies. The  gentlemen  forget  that  the  colored 
people  are  subject  to  a  strong  expulsive  power 
from  the  whites,  which  they  say  must  and  shall 
continue  whether  it  is  instinct  or  not;  and  that 
the  existence  of  a  race  instinct  can  never  be 
proved  or  disproved  until  all  expulsive  forces  are 
withdrawn  and  both  races  are  left  totally  free  to 
the  influences  of  those  entirely  self-sufficient  social 
forces  which  one  of  the  gentlemen  has  so  neatly 
termed  "  centripetal."  But  even  if  these  over- 
looked facts  were  out  of  existence,  what  would 
be  proved  ?  Only,  and  for  the  second  time,  that 
the  centripetal  force  of  social  selection  operates 
so  completely  to  the  fulfillment  of  these  gentle- 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


77 


men's  wishes,  that  there  is  no  longer  any  call  to 
prove  or  disprove  the  existence  of  race  instinct, 
or  the  faintest  excuse  for  arbitrary  race  separa- 
tions in  the  enjoyment  of  civil  rights. 

Thus,  setting  out  with  the  idea  that  the  social 
integrity  of  the  races  requires  vigorous  protection 
from  without,  they  prove  instead  by  every  argu- 
ment brought  to  establish  it,  that  every  relation 
really  social,  partially  social,  or  even  mistakenly 
social,  takes — instinct  or  no  instinct — the  most 
spontaneous  and  complete  care  of  itself.  We 
are  debating  the  freedman's  title  to  a  totally  im- 
personal freedom  in  the  enjoyment  of  all  imper- 
sonal rights ;  and  they  succeed  only  in  saying, 
never  in  bringing  a  particle  of  legitimate  evidence 
to  prove,  that  "  Neither  race  wants  it  "  ;  an  as- 
sertion which  no  sane  man,  knowing  the  facts, 
can  sincerely  make  until,  like  these  gentlemen, 
he  has  first  made  the  most  woful  confusion  in 
his  own  mind  between  personal  social  privileges 
and  impersonal  civil  rights. 


VII.    THE   RIGHT   TO    RULE. 

But  they  have  yet  one  last  fancied  stronghold. 
They  say,  "  The  interest  of  both  races  is  against 
it " ;  that  is,  against  a  common  participation  in 
their  civil  rights  ;  and  that  it  is,  rather,  in  favor  of 
a  separate  enjoyment  of  them.  Now,  there  are 
people — but  their  number  is  steadily  growing  less 


*?8  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

— wlio  would  mean  by  this  merely  that  the  in- 
terest of  both  races  is  against  common  participa- 
tion because  they  are  against  it  and  have  made 
separate  participation  the  price  of  peace.  But 
the  gentlemen  whom  we  have  in  view  in  this 
paper,  though  they  must  confess  their  lines  often 
imply  this,  give  a  reason  somewhat  less  offen- 
sive in  its  intention.  They  say  common  partici- 
pation means  common  sociality,  and  common 
sociality,  race-amalgamation.  Have  we  not  just 
used  their  own  facts  to  show  conclusively  that 
this  is  not  what  occurs  ?  Yet  these  two  reasons, 
so  called,  are  actually  the  only  ones  that  scrutiny 
can  find  in  all  the  utterances  pledging  these  gen- 
tlemen to  "  the  exactest  justice  and  the  fullest 
equity."  Nay,  there  is  another ;  we  must  main- 
tain, they  say,  "  the  clear  and  unmistakable 
domination  of  the  white  race  in  the  South." — 
Why,  certainly  we  must !  and  we  must  do  it 
honestly  and  without  tampering  with  anybody's 
natural  rights  ;  and  we  can  do  it !  But  why  do 
they  say  we  must  do  it  ?  Because  "  character, 
intelligence,  and  property  "  belong  preeminently 
to  the  white  race,  and  "  character,  intelligence, 
and  property  "  have  "  the  right  to  rule."  So, 
as  far  as  the  reasoning  is  sincere,  they  are 
bound  to  mean  that  not  merely  being  white 
entails  this  right,  but  the  possession  of  "  charac- 
ter, intelligence,  and  property."  And  the  true 
formula  becomes  "  the  clear  and  unmistakable 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


79 


domination "  of  "  character,  intelligence,  and 
property  "  "  in  the  South."  But  if  this  be  the 
true  doctrine,  as  who  can  deny  it  is  ?  then  why 
— after  we  have  run  the  color  line  to  suit  our- 
selves through  all  our  truly  social  relations — 
why  need  we  usurp  the  prerogative  to  run  it  so 
needlessly  through  civil  rights,  also  ?  It  is 
widely  admitted  that  we  are  vastly  the  superior 
race  in  everything — as  a  race.  But  is  every  col- 
ored man  inferior  to  every  white  man  in  charac- 
ter, intelligence,  and  property  ?  Is  there  no  "  re- 
sponsible and  steadfast  element  "  at  all  among  a 
people  who  furnish  16,000  school-teachers  and 
are  assessed  for  $91,000,000  worth  of  taxable 
property  ?  Are  there  no  poor  and  irresponsible 
whites  ?  So,  the  color  line  and  the  line  of  char- 
acter, intelligence,  and  property  frequently  cross 
each  other.  Then  tell  us,  gentlemen,  which  are 
you  really  for  ;  the  color  line,  or  the  line  of  char- 
acter, intelligence,  and  property  that  divides  be- 
tween those  who  have  and  those  who  have  not 
"  the  right  to  rule  "  ?  You  dare  not  declare  for 
an  inflexible  color  line ;  such  an  answer  would 
shame  the  political  intelligence  of  a  Russian. 

Another  point  just  here.  The  right  to  rule : 
What  is  it?  It  is  not  the  right  to  take  any 
peaceable  citizen's  civil  right  from  him  in  whole 
or  in  part  It  is  not  the  right  to  decree  who  may 
earn  or  not  earn  any  status  within  the  reach  of 
his  proper  powers.  It  is  not  the  right  to  oppress. 


8o  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

In  America,  to  rule  is  to  serve.  There  is  a  news- 
paper published  in  Atlanta  called  "  The  Consti- 
tution." The  Instrument  of  which  this  name  is 
intended  to  remind  us,  and  of  which  it  is  well  to 
keep  us  reminded,  is  founded  on  a  simple  princi- 
ple that  solves  the  problem  of  free  government 
over  which  Europe  sat  in  dark  perplexity  for 
centuries,  shedding  tears  of  blood ;  the  principle 
that  the  right  to  rule  is  the  consent  of  the  ruled 
and  is  vested  in  the  majority  by  the  consent  of 
all.  It  took  ages  of  agony  for  the  human  race 
to  discover  that  there  is  no  moral  right  of  class 
rule,  and  that  the  only  safety  to  human  freedom 
lies  in  the  intelligence,  virtue,  and  wealth  of  com- 
munities holding  every  right  of  every  being  in 
such  sacred  regard,  and  all  claims  for  class  or 
personal  privilege  in  such  uniform  contempt,  that 
unintelligence,  vice,  and  poverty,  having  no  potent 
common  grievance,  shall  naturally  invest  intelli- 
gence, character,  and  property  with  the  right  to 
rule.  It  took  ages  for  us  to  discover  the  neces- 
sity of  binding  intelligence,  character,  and  prop- 
erty to  the  maintenance  of  this  attitude  by  giving, 
once  for  all,  to  the  majority  the  custody  and  right- 
of-assignment  of  this  truly  precious  right  to  rule. 
Is  this  mere  sentiment  ?  A  scheme  in  the  clouds  ? 
Who  says  so  cannot  truly  qualify  as  a  whole 
American  citizen.  The  safety  of  American  gov- 
ernment is  that  intelligence,  virtue,  and  wealth 
dare  not  press  any  measure  whose  viciousness  or 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH.  8 1 

tyranny  might  suspend  the  expulsive  forces  that 
keep  unintelligence,  vice,  and  poverty  divided 
among  themselves ;  and  that  intelligence  and 
virtue  hold  themselves  entirely  free  to  combine 
now  with  wealth  and  now  with  poverty  as  now 
the  lower  million  or  now  the  upper  ten  shows  the 
livelier  disposition  to  impose  upon  the  other. 
But  the  only  way  to  preserve  these  conditions  is 
to  hold  sacred  the  will  and  voice  of  the  majority. 
Of  course  there  are  friction  and  imperfections  in 
their  working ;  but  human  wisdom  has  not  yet 
found  any  other  scheme  that  carries  us  so  near 
to  perfect  government.  The  right  to  rule  is  a 
right  to  earn  the  confidence  and  choice  of  the 
majority  of  the  whole  unfettered  people.  Yet  it 
is  in  the  face  of  this  fundamental  principle  of 
American  freedom  that  our  traditionist  friends 
stand,  compelling  six  million  freedmen  to  mass 
together  under  a  group  of  common  grievances, 
within  a  wall  of  these  gentlemen's  own  avowed 
building,  then  charging  them  with  being 
"  leagued  together  in  ignorance  and  irresponsi- 
bility," and  then  talking  in  large  approval  about 
"  minorities  " — not  earning,  but — "  asserting  and 
maintaining  control."  And  a  proposition  to  set 
such  antique  usurpation  of  human  rights  aside, 
to  remove  the  real  grievances  that  make  a  com- 
mon cause  for  six  million  distrusted  and  distrust- 
ing people,  to  pull  down  that  wall  of  civil — not 
social — distinctions  that  tends  to  keep  them 
ii 


82  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

"  leagued  together  in  ignorance  and  irresponsi- 
bility," to  open  to  them  the  civil — not  social — 
rewards  of  gentility  and  education,  and  the  re- 
sponsibilities of  knowledge  and  citizenship,  to 
arouse  in  them  the  same  concern  in  common  pub- 
lic interests  that  we  feel,  and  to  make  all  their  for- 
tunes subject  to  the  same  influences  as  ours, — 
this,  we  are  told,  is  "  against  the  interest  of  both 
races " !  And  this  we  have  from  men  who, 
claiming  a  preeminent  right  to  speak  for  the 
South,  claim  with  it  a  "  right  to  rule  "  that  fails  to 
signify  anything  better  than  the  right  of  the  white 
man  to  rule  the  black  without  his  consent  and 
without  any  further  discrimination  between  in- 
telligence and  unintelligence  or  between  respon- 
sibility and  irresponsibility.  In  other  words,  a 
principle  of  political  and  civil  selection  such  as 
no  freeman  could  possibly  choose  and  which  can- 
not be  the  best  interest  of  any  American  com- 
munity. So  the  other  side  are  our  witnesses 
again.  And  now  we  may  say  to  them,  as  the 
lawyers  do  in  court, — "  That  will  do." 


VIII.    SUMMING    UP. 

The  case  is  before  the  reader.  The  points  of 
fact  made  in  our  earlier  paper — the  privations 
suffered  by  the  colored  people  in  their  mat- 
ters of  civil  rights — have  been  met  with  feeble 
half-denials  equivalent  to  admissions  by  oppo- 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH.  83 

nents  in  controversy  too  engrossed  with  counter 
statements  and  arguments,  that  crumble  at  the 
touch,  to  attend  to  a  statement  of  facts.  In  the 
end  they  stand  thus  :  As  to  churches,  there  is 
probably  not  a  dozen  in  the  land,  if  one,  "  col- 
ored "  or  "  white,"  where  a  white  person  is  not  at 
least  professedly  welcome  to  its  best  accommo- 
dations ;  while  the  colored  man,  though  he  be 
seven-eighths  white,  is  shut  up,  on  the  ground 
that  "  his  race  "  prefers  it,  to  the  poor  and  often 
unprofitable  appointments  of  the  "  African " 
church,  whether  he  like  it  best  or  not,  unless  he 
is  ready  to  accept  without  a  murmur  distinctions 
that  mark  him,  in  the  sight  of  the  whole  people, 
as  one  of  a  despised  caste  and  that  follow  him 
through  the  very  sacraments.  As  to  schooling, 
despite  the  fact  that  he  is  to-day  showing  his 
eager  willingness  to  accept  separate  schools"  for 
his  children  wherever  the  white  man  demands  the 
separation,  yet  both  his  children  and  the  white 
man's  are  being  consigned  to  illiteracy  wherever 
they  are  too  few  and  poor  to  form  separate 
schools.  In  some  mountainous  parts  of  Ken- 
tucky there  is  but  one  colored  school  district  in 
a  county.  In  railway  travel  the  colored  people's 
rights  are  tossed  from  pillar  to  post  with  an  ever- 
varying  and  therefore  more  utterly  indefensible 
and  intolerable  capriciousness.  In  Virginia  they 
may  ride  exactly  as  white  people  do  and  in  the 
same  cars.  In  a  neighboring  State,  a  white  man 


84 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


may  ride  in  the  "  ladies'  car,"  while  a  colored 
man  of  exactly  the  same  dress  and  manners — 
nay,  his  wife  or  daughter — must  ride  in  the  notor- 
ious "  Jim  Crow  car,"  unprotected  from  smokers 
and  dram-drinkers  and  lovers  of  vile  language. 
"  In  South  Carolina,"  says  the  Charleston  "  News 
and  Courier,"  on  the  other  hand,  "  respectable 
colored  persons  who  buy  first-class  tickets  on  any 
railroad  ride  in  the  first-class  cars  as  a  right,  and 
their  presence  excites  no  comment  on  the  part  of 
their  white  fellow-passengers.  It  is  a  great  deal 
pleasanter  to  travel  with  respectable  and  well- 
behaved  colored  people  than  with  unmannerly 
and  ruffianly  white  men."  In  Alabama  the  ma- 
jority of  the  people  have  not  made  this  discovery, 
at  least  if  we  are  to  believe  their  newspapers.  In 
Tennessee  the  law  requires  the  separation  of  all 
first-class  passengers  by  race  with  equal  accom- 
modations for  both ;  thus  waiving  the  old  plea 
of  decency's  exigencies  and  forcing  upon  Amer- 
ican citizens  adjudged  to  be  first-class  passengers 
an  alienism  that  has  thrown  away  its  last  shadow 
of  an  excuse.  But  this  is  only  the  law,  and  the 
history  of  the  very  case  alluded  to  by  our  tra- 
ditionist  friends,  in  which  a  colored  woman  gained 
damages  for  being  compelled  to  accept  inferior 
accommodation  or  none  for  a  first-class  ticket,  is 
the  history  of  an  outrage  so  glaring  that  only  a 
person  blinded  to  the  simplest  rights  of  human 
beings  could  cite  it  in  such  a  defense. 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH.  85 

A  certain  daily  railway  train  was  supplied,  ac- 
cording to  the  law,  with  a  smoking-car,  and  two 
first-class  cars,  one  for  colored  and  one  for 
whites.  The  two  first-class  cars  were  so  nearly 
of  a  kind  that  they  were  exchangeable.  They 
generally  kept  their  relative  positions  on  the 
track  ;  but  the  "  ladies'  car  "  of  the  morning  trip 
became  the  "  colored  car "  of  the  return,  after- 
noon, trip,  and  vice  versa.  But  the  rules  of  the 
colored  car  were  little  regarded.  Men,  white  and 
black,  were  sometimes  forbidden,  sometimes  al- 
lowed, to  smoke  and  drink  there.  Says  the 
court,  "  The  evidence  is  abundant  to  show  that 
the  rule  excluding  smoking  from  that  car  was 
but  a  nominal  one,  that  it  was  often  disregarded, 
that  white  passengers  understood  it  to  be  a  nominal 
rule,  and  that  adequate  means  were  not  adopted 
to  secure  the  same  first-class  and  orderly  passage 
to  the  colored  passengers  occupying  that  car  as 
was  accorded  to  the  passengers  in  the  rear  car. 
Nor  was  the  separation  of  the  classes  of  the  pas- 
sengers complete.  There  is  no  evidence  tending 
to  show  that  the  white  passengers  were  excluded 
from  the  car  assigned  to  colored  passengers,  and 
it  appears  that  whenever  the  train  was  unusually 
crowded  it  was  expected  that  the. excess  of  white 
passengers  would  ride,  as  they  then  did  ride,  in  the 
forward  one  of  the  two  first-class  cars.  So,  too, 
it  appeared  that  persons  of  color,  of  whom  the 
plaintiff  was  one,  had  several  times  occupied  seats 


86  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

in  the  rear  car."  A  certain  "  person  of  lady-like 
appearance  and  deportment,"  one  day  in  Sep- 
tember, 1883,  got  aboard  this  train  with  a  first- 
class  ticket.  She  knew  the  train,  and  that,  as 
the  court  states  it,  "  in  the  rear  car  .  .  .  quiet 
and  good  order  were  to  so  great  an  extent  the 
rule  that  it  was  rarely  if  ever  that  any  passenger 
gave  annoyance  by  his  conduct  to  his  fellow- 
passengers."  In  the  colored  car  there  was  at 
least  one  colored  man  smoking,  and  one  white  man 
whom  she  saw  to  be  drunk.  She  entered  the 
rear  car  and  sat  down,  no  one  objecting.  She 
was  the  only  colored  person  there.  The  con- 
ductor, collecting  his  tickets,  came  to  her.  He 
was  not  disconcerted.  Not  long  previously  he 
had  forbidden  another  colored  person  to  ride  in 
that  car,  who  must  also  have  been  "  of  lady-like 
appearance  and  deportment,"  for  when  he  saw 
this  one  he  "  supposed  her  to  be  the  same 
person  .  .  .  intentionally  violating  the  defend- 
ant's (Railroad's)  rules  and  seeking  to  annoy  his 
other  passengers"  Twice  they  exchanged  polite 
request  and  refusal  to  leave  the  car ;  and  then,  in 
full  presence  of  all  those  "  other  passengers  " 
whom  this  person  of  lady-like  appearance  and 
deportment  was  erroneously  suspected  of  seeking 
to  annoy,"  there  occured  a  thing  that  ought  to 
make  the  nation  blush.  The  conductor  laid 
hands  upon  this  defenseless  woman,  whose  in- 
fraction of  a  rule  was  interfering  neither  with  the 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH.  £7 

running  of  the  road,  the  collection  of  fares,  nor 
the  comfort  of  passengers,  and  "by  force  re- 
moved her  from  her  seat  and  carried  her  out  of 
the  car.  When  near  the  door  of  the  car  the 
plaintiff  promised  that  she  would  then,  if  per- 
mitted, leave  the  car  rather  than  be  forcibly 
ejected ;  but  the  conductor,  as  he  says,  told  her 
that  her  consent  came  too  late,  and  continued  to 
remove  her  forcibly.  On  reaching  the  platform 
of  the  car,  plaintiff  left  the  train."  Judgment 
was  given  for  the  plaintiff.  But  the  point  was 
carefully  made  that  she  would  have  been  without 
any  grievance  if  the  "  colored  car "  had  only 
been  kept  first-class.  In  other  words,  for  not 
providing  separate  first-class  accommodations, 
five  hundred  dollars  damages ;  for  laying  violent 
hands  upon  a  peaceable,  lady-like,  and  unpro- 
tected woman,  nothing  ;  and  nothing  for  requir- 
ing such  a  one  publicly  to  sit  apart  from  pas- 
sengers of  the  same  grade  under  a  purely 
ignominious  distinction.  What!  not  ignominious? 
Fancy  the  passenger  a  white  lady,  choosing,  for 
reasons  of  her  own,  to  sit  in  a  first-class  "  colored 
car  " ;  infringing,  if  you  please,  some  rule ;  but 
paying  her  way,  and  causing  no  one  any  incon- 
venience, unsafety,  or  delay.  Imagine  her,  on 
insisting  upon  her  wish  to  stay,  drawn  from  her 
seat  by  force,  and  lifted  and  carried  out  by  a 
black  conductor,  telling  her  as  he  goes  that  her 
offer  to  walk  out  comes  too  late.  If  this  is  not 


88  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

ignominy,  what  is  it  ?  To  the  commission  and 
palliation  of  such  unmanly  deeds  are  we  driven 
by  our  attempts  to  hold  under  our  own  arbitrary 
dictation  others'  rights  that  we  have  no  moral 
right  to  touch,  rights  that  in  ourselves  we  count 
more  sacred  than  property  and  dearer  than  life. 

But  we  must  not  tarry.  If  we  turn  to  the 
matter  of  roadside  refreshment  what  do  we  see  ? 
Scarcely  a  dozen  railroad  refreshment-rooms 
from  the  Rio  Grande  to  the  Potomac, — is  there 
one  ? — where  the  weary  and  hungry  colored 
passenger,  be  he  ever  so  perfect  in  dress  and  be- 
havior, can  snatch  a  hasty  meal  in  the  presence 
of  white  guests  of  any  class  whatever,  though 
in  any  or  every  one  of  them  he  or  she  can  get 
the  same  food,  and  eat  with  the  same  knife,  fork, 
and  plate  that  are  furnished  to  white  strangers, 
if  only  he  or  she  will  take  a  menial's  attitude  and 
accept  them  in  the  kitchen.  Tennessee  has 
formally  "abrogated  the  rule  of  the  common 
law  "  in  order  to  make  final  end  of  "  any  right 
in  favor  of  any  such  person  so  refused  admission" 
to  the  enjoyment  of  an  obvious  civil  right  which 
no  public  host  need  ever  permit  any  guest  to 
mistake  for  a  social  liberty.  As  to  places  of 
public  amusement,  the  gentlemen  who  say  that 
"  each  [race]  gets  the  same  accommodation  for 
the  same  money,"  simply — forget.  The  state- 
ment comes  from  Atlanta.  But,  in  fact,  in  At- 
lanta, in  Georgia,  in  the  whole  South,  there  is 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


89 


scarcely  a  place  of  public  amusement — except 
the  cheap  museums,  where  there  are  no  seated 
audiences — in  which  a  colored  man  or  woman, 
however  unobjectionable  personally,  can  buy,  at 
any  price,  any  but  a  second — sometimes  any  but 
a  third  or  fourth-class  accommodation.  During 
a  day's  stay  in  Atlanta  lately,  the  present  writer 
saw  many  things  greatly  to  admire ;  many  in- 
spiring signs  of  thrift,  stability,  virtue,  and 
culture.  Indeed,  where  can  he  say  that  he  has 
not  seen  them,  in  ten  Southern  States  lately 
visited  ?  And  it  is  in  contemplation  of  these 
evidences  of  greatness,  prosperity,  safety,  and  the 
desire  to  be  just,  that  he  feels  constrained  to  ask 
whether  it  must  be  that  in  the  principal  depot 
of  such  a  city  the  hopeless  excommunication 
of  every  person  of  African  tincture  from  the 
civil  rewards  of  gentility  must  be  advertised  by 
three  signs  at  the  entrances  of  three  separate 
rooms,  one  for  "  Ladies,"  one  for  "  Gentlemen," 
and  the  third  a  "  Colored  waiting-room  "  ?  Visit- 
ing the  principal  library  of  the  city,  he  was 
eagerly  assured,  in  response  to  inquiry,  that  no 
person  of  color  would  be  allowed  to  draw  out 
books ;  and  when  a  colored  female,  not  par- 
ticularly tidy  in  dress,  came  forward  to  return  a 
book  and  draw  another,  it  was  quickly  explained 
that  she  was  merely  a  servant  and  messenger  for 
some  white  person.  Are  these  things  necessary 
to — are  they  consistent  with — an  exalted  civiliza- 


go  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

tion  founded  on  equal  rights  and  the  elevation  of 
the  masses  ? 

And  the  freedman's  rights  in  the  courts.  It  is 
regarding  this  part  of  our  subject  that  our  friends 
on  the  other  side  make  a  mistake  too  common 
everywhere  and  very  common  among  us  of  the 
South.  That  is,  they  assume  the  state  of  affairs 
in  more  distant  localities  to  be  the  same  as  that 
immediately  around  them.  A  statement  con- 
cerning certain  matters  in  Florida  or  Maryland 
is  indignantly  denied  in  Tennessee  or  Texas  be- 
cause it  is  not  true  of  those  regions ;  and  so 
throughout  It  is  in  this  spirit  that  one  of  these 
gentlemen  explains  that  in  Georgia  negroes  are 
not  excluded  from  the  jury  lists  except  for  actual 
incompetency,  and  thereupon  "assumes  that 
Georgia  does  not  materially  differ  from  the  other 
States."  But  really,  in  Tennessee  they  may  not 
sit  in  the  jury-box  at  all,  except  that  in  a  few 
counties  they  may  sit  in  judgment  on  the  case  of 
a  colored  person.  While  in  Texas,  at  the  very 
time  of  the  gentleman's  writing,  the  suggestion 
of  one  of  her  distinguished  citizens  to  accord  the 
right  of  jury  duty  to  the  colored  people,  was 
being  flouted  by  the  press  as  an  "innovation 
upon  established  usage,"  and  a  "  sentimental  and 
utterly  impracticable  idea."  This  in  the  face  of 
a  State  constitution  and  laws  that  give  no  war- 
rant for  the  race  distinction.  So  much  for  as- 
sumption. 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH.  gi 

The  same  mistake  is  repeated  by  the  same 
writer  in  discussing  the  question  of  the  freed- 
men's  criminal  sentences.  No  fact  or  person  is 
brought  forward  to  prove  or  disprove  anything 
except  for  Georgia.  And  even  the  prosecuting  at- 
torney for  the  Atlanta  circuit,  brought  in  to  testify, 
says,  for  the  State's  cities  and  towns,  that  the 
negro  gets  there  "  equal  and  exact  j  ustice  before  the 
courts  "  ;  but  he  is  not  willing  to  deny  "  a  linger- 
ing prejudice  and  occasional  injustice  "  in  remote 
counties.  Why,  .with  nearly  6,000,000  freed 
people  getting  "  full  and  exact  justice  in  the 
courts  whether  the  jury  is  white  or  black,"  why 
could  there  not  be  found  among  them  two  or 
three  trustworthy  witnesses  to  testify  to  this  fact  ? 
Their  testimony  would  have  been  important,  for 
these  lines  are  written  within  hand's  reach  of 
many  letters  from  colored  men  denying  that  such 
is  the  case. 

The  present  writer  does  not  charge,  and  never 
did,  that  our  Southern  white  people  consciously 
and  maliciously  rendered  oppressive  verdicts 
against  the  freedman.  On  the  contrary,  it  is 
plainly  stated  by  him  that  they  acted  "  not  so 
maliciously  as  unreflectingly,"  and  "  ignorant  of 
the  awful  condition  of  the  penitentiaries."  His 
only  printed  utterance  on  the  subject  is  on  record 
in  "  The  Freedman's  Case  in  Equity,"  and  is  too 
long  to  quote ;  but  he  cited  the  official  reports  of 
o'ur  Southern  State  prisons  themselves,  and  asked 


92 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


how  with  their  facts  before  us  we  are  to  escape 
the  conviction  that  the  popular  mind  had  been 
seduced — as  every  student  of  American  prison 
statistics  knows  it  has — by  the  glittering  tempta- 
tions of  our  Southern  convict-lease  system  ;  and 
not  one  word  of  reply  have  we  had,  except  the 
assertion,  which  nobody  would  think  of  denying, 
that  the  black  man,  often  in  Georgia,  and  some- 
times elsewhere,  gets  an  even-handed  and  noble 
justice  from  white  juries. 

Have  our  opponents  observed  the  workings  of 
this  convict-lease  system  ?  To  put  such  a  system 
as  a  rod  of  punishment  into  the  hands  of  a 
powerful  race  sitting  in  judgment  upon  the  mis- 
demeanors of  a  feebler  and  despised  caste  would 
warp  the  verdicts  of  the  most  righteous  people 
under  the  sun.  Examine  our  Southern  peniten- 
tiary reports.  What  shall  we  say  to  such  sen- 
tences inflicted  for  larceny  alone,  as  twelve, 
fourteen,  fifteen,  twenty,  and  in  one  case  forty 
years  of  a  penal  service  whose  brutal  tasks  and 
whippings  kill  in  an  average  of  five  years  ? 
Larceny  is  the  peculiar  crime  of  the  poorest 
classes  everywhere.  In  all  penitentiaries  out  of 
the  South  the  convicts  for  this  offense  always 
exceed  and  generally  double  the  number  of  con- 
victs for  burglary.  Larceny  has  long  been  called 
the  favorite  crime  of  the  negro  criminal.  What, 
then,  shall  we  say  to  the  facts,  deduced  from 
official  records,  that  in  the  Georgia  penitentiary 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


93 


and  convict  camps  there  were  in  1882  twice  as 
many  colored  convicts  for  burglary  as  for  lar- 
ceny, and  that  they  were,  moreover,  serving 
sentences  averaging  nearly  twice  the  average  of 
the  white  convicts  in  the  same  places  for  the 
same  crime  ?  This,  too,  notwithstanding  a  very 
large  number  of  short  sentences  to  colored  men, 
and  a  difference  between  their  longest  and  short- 
est terms  twice  as  great  as  in  the  case  of  the 
whites.  For  larceny  the  difference  is  five  times 
as  great.1  Shall  we  from  these  facts  draw  hasty 
conclusions  ?  We  draw  none.  If  any  one  can 
explain  them  away,  in  the  name  of  humanity  let 
us  rejoice  to  see  him  do  so.  We  are  far  from 
charging  any  one  with  deliberately  prostituting 
justice.  We  are  far  from  overlooking  "  the 
depravity  of  the  negro."  But  those  who  rest  on 
this  cheap  explanation  are  bound  to  tell  us  which 
shows  the  greater  maliciousness ;  for  one  man  to 
be  guilty  of  hog-stealing  or  for  twelve  jurors  to 
send  him  to  the  coal  mines  for  twenty  years  for 
doing  it?  In  Georgia  outside  her  prisons  there  are 
eight  whites  to  every  seven  blacks.  Inside,  there 
are  eight  whites  to  every  eighty  blacks.  The 
depravity  of  the  negro  may  explain  away  much, 
but  we  cannot  know  how  much  while  there  also 
remain  in  force  the  seductions  of  our  atrocious 
convict-lease  system,  and  our  attitude  of  domi- 

1  Without  counting  the  exceptional  forty  years'  sentence  men- 
tioned. 


94 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


nation  over  the  blacks,  so  subtly  dangerous  to  our 
own  integrity.  Here  is  a  rough,  easy  test  that 
may  go  for  what  it  is  worth :  These  crimes  of 
larceny  and  burglary  are  just  the  sort — since  they 
are  neither  the  most  trivial  nor  the  most  horrible 
— to  incur  excessive  verdicts  and  sentences,  if 
the  prejudices  of  one  class  against  another  come, 
into  the  account.  Now,  what  is  the.  fact  in  the 
prisons  we  have  mentioned  ?  Of  all  the  inmates 
under  sentence  for  these  crimes  nineteen-twen- 
tieths  are  classed  as  of  that  race  which  we 
"dominate"  both  out  of  and  in  the  jury-box. 
We  ask  no  opinion  on  these  points  from  the 
stupid  or  vicious  of  either  whites  or  blacks ;  but 
is  it  wise  for  us  not  to  consider  what  may  be 
their  effect  upon  the  minds  of  the  property-hold- 
ing, intelligent,  and  virtuous  portion  of  the  "  dom- 
inated "  race  ?  Is  it  right  ? 

IX.      POLITICAL   "  SOLIDITY  " WHY   AND   TILL 

WHEN. 

In  the  same  number  of  THE  CENTURY  that 
contains  "  In  Plain  Black  and  White,"  appears  an 
open  letter  on  "  The  Solid  South."  It  tells  us 
that  political  "  solidity,"  founded  on  the  merits 
neither  of  candidates  nor  questions,  is  an  em- 
phatic national  and  still  greater  local  evil ;  but 
that  the  whites  of  the  South  "  had  to  be  solid," 
because  they  feared,  and  that  they  still  fear,  the 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


95 


supremacy  of  the  blacks.  That  if  this  fear  were 
removed  the  whites  would  divide.  Hence,  we 
must  first  procure  the  division  of  the  blacks ; 
this  is  what  it  calls  "  the  prerequisite."  Is  it  ? 
Is  that  a  wise  or  just  arbitration  ?  Must  the  side 
that  is  immeasurably  the  weaker  begin  the  dis- 
armament ?  Is  "  noblesse  oblige  "  untranslatable 
into  "  American  "?  We  are  only  told  that  "  once 
divide  the  negro  vote  and  the  '  solid  South '  is 
broken."  True  statement,  but  sadly  antique. 
An  old  catchword  pulled  out  of  the  rubbish  of 
the  Reconstruction  strife.  And  why  was  the 
negro  vote  solid  ?  The  carpet-bagger  and  scala- 
wag ?  It  was  so  believed,  and  these — the  most 
of  them  richly  deserving  their  fate — were  sup- 
pressed. What  then?  Less  political  activity 
among  the  blacks.  But  division  ?  No.  Then 
why  were  the  blacks  still  "  solid  ?  "  The  open 
letter  gives  two  causes :  first,  gratitude  to  the 
Republican  party;  second,  fear  of  the  Demo- 
cratic. But  these  sentiments,  it  says,  are  fading 
out.  Will  their  disappearance  reveal  the  solid 
blacks  divided  ?  That  depends  on  the  matter 
that  forms — what  the  open  letter  does  not  touch 
— the  solid  bottom  of  this  question.  But  the 
more  ambitious  article  in  the  same  number  of 
the  magazine  boldly  confesses  it  when  it  decrees 
the  subserviency  of  the  freedmaris  civil  rights  to 
the  white  man's  domination.  As  long  as  that 
continues  to  be  or  to  threaten,  the  blacks  will  be 


96 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


solid.  We — any  people — would  be  so — would 
have  to  be  so,  in  their  place.  Such  a  decree  is 
equivalent  to  saying  they  must  and  shall  be  solid. 
Only  let  it  be  withdrawn  and  the  solidity  will 
vanish  from  the  white  vote  and  the  black  at  the 
same  instant. 

This  is  what  is  coming.  There  is  to-day  no 
political  party  in  America  that  is  "  solid  "  for 
this  un-American  and  tyrannical  principle ;  and 
the  reason  why  the  negro  vote  is  a  divided  vote 
in  the  North  to-day  and  in  the  South  shows 
more  signs  of  dividing  than  ever  before  is  that 
the  Republican  party  has  grown  fat  and  lazy  con- 
cerning civil  rights,  while  Democratic  legislatures 
and  governors,  north,  east,  west,  have  been  pass- 
ing and  signing  civil  rights  bills,  rooting  out  of 
the  laws  and  of  popular  sentiment  this  heresy  of 
domination  by  fixed  class  and  race,  and  throwing 
to  the  winds  "  legal  discriminations  on  account  of 
color  [which]  are  not  based  on  character  or  con- 
duct and  have  no  relation  to  moral  worth  and 
fitness  for  civic  usefulness,  but  are  rather  relics 
of  prejudice  which  had  its  origin  in  slavery.  I 
recommend,"  says  the  present  Democratic  gov- 
ernor of  Ohio,  from  whose  message  we  are 
quoting,  "  I  recommend  their  total  repeal."  It 
is  but  little  over  a  year  since  the  Democrats 
joined  the  Republicans  in  the  legislature  of  Con- 
necticut in  making  liable  to  fine  and  imprison- 
ment "every  person  who  subjects  or  causes  to  be 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


97 


subjected  any  other  person  to  the  deprivation  of 
any  rights,  privileges,  or  immunities  secured  or 
protected  by  the  Constitution  of  the  State  or  of 
the  United  States,  on  account  of  such  person 
being  an  alien  or  by  reason  of  his  color  or  race." 
The  time  is  still  shorter  since  a  Democratic 
majority  in  the  legislature  of  New  Jersey  passed 
a  bill  of  civil  rights,  as  its  own  text  says,  "  appli- 
cable alike  to  citizens  of  every  race  and  color." 
Nor  are  they  afraid  of  the  names  of  things. 
"  By  direction  of  Governor  Abbett,"  writes  the 
executive  clerk,  "  I  send  you  copy  of  the  Civil 
Rights  bill  as  passed  by  the  Legislature  and 
approved  by  him."  In  Indiana,  while  these  pages 
were  being  written,  Democrats  were  endeavoring 
to  pass  a  civil  rights  bill.  In  May  of  last  year 
the  legislature  at  Albany  passed  a  bill  removing 
the  last  remaining  civil  disabilities  from  the 
colored  people  in  the  city  of  New  York,  by  a 
unanimous  vote,  "three-fifths  being  present  "  ;  and 
the  governor  who  signed  the  act  is  now  President 
of  the  United  States. 

"  Ah ! "  some  will  say,  "  these  Northern  Demo- 
crats do  this  in  their  ignorance ;  they  do  not 
know  the  negro."  Is  this  the  whole  truth  ?  Do 
not  we  forget  that  they  have  only  gradually  put 
aside  from  their  own  minds  the  very  worst 
opinion  of  the  negro  that  ever  we  had  ?  To  get 
where  they  are  they  have  left  behind  the  very 
same  prejudices  and  misconceptions  of  citizens' 
13 


98  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

rights  that  we  are  called  to  lay  aside,  and  no 
others.  Nay,  even  we  assert  facts  now,  that 
twenty  years  ago  we  used  to  say  no  man  who 
knew  the  negro  could  honestly  believe. 

"  But " — the  answer  comes  again — "  if  they 
had  the  negro  among  them  numerically  power- 
ful, they  would  not  venture  to  concede" — etc. 
Let  us  see :  From  Georgia,  where,  we  are  told, 
the  freedman  shall  never  enjoy  "  the  policy  indi- 
cated in  the  Civil  Rights  bill,"  pass  across  its 
eastern  boundary,  and  lo,  we  are  in  a  State  under 
Southern  Democratic  rule,  where  the  blacks  are 
in  the  majority,  yet  which  is  not  afraid  to  leave 
on  the  printed  page,  from  the  days  of  Recon- 
struction, a  civil  rights  bill,  not  nearly  so  com- 
prehensive, it  is  true,  but  "  fully  as  stringent," 
says  its  leading  daily  journal,  "  as  any  that  Con- 
gress ever  placed  upon  the  statute-books,"  and 
attending  whose  enforcement  "  there  is  no  friction 
or  unpleasantness."  This,  in  South  Carolina ! 

May  the  time  be  not  long  delayed  when  her 
strong,  proud  people,  that  are  sometimes  wrong 
but  ever  conscientious  and  ever  brave,  not  con- 
tent with  merely  not  undoing,  shall  broaden  the 
applications  of  that  law  until  it  perfectly  protects 
white  man  and  black  man  alike  in  the  enjoyment 
of  every  civil  right,  and  their  hearts  behind  the 
law  open  to  the  freedman  equally  with  the  white 
man,  as  far  as  in  him  lies  to  achieve  it,  every  civil 
reward  of  intelligence,  wealth,  and  virtue.  Then 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


99 


shall  it  still  be  as  true  as  it  is  to-day  that  "  No 
special  harm  has  come  of  it."  Not  only  so  ;  but 
the  freedman,  free  indeed,  shall  along  with  his 
other  fetters  cast  off  the  preoccupation  in  this 
question  of  civil  rights  which  now  engrosses  his 
best  intelligence,  and  shall  become  a  factor  in 
the  material  and  moral  progress  of  the  whole 
land.  Be  the  fault  now  where  it  may,  he  will  not 
then  outnumber  the  white  man  on  the  prison  rolls 
eleven  to  one.  And  what  is  true  of  one  Southern 
State  is  true  of  all.  The  temptations  to  which 
the  negro — shutout  from  aspirations — now  yields, 
will  lose  their  power,  and  his  steps  be  turned 
with  a  new  hope  and  desire  toward  the  prizes  of 
industry,  frugality,  and  a  higher  cultivation. 
Multiplying  and  refining  his  tastes,  the  rank 
energies  of  his  present  nature  will  not,  as  now, 
run  entirely  to  that  animal  fecundity  character- 
istic of  all  thriftless,  reckless,  unaspiring  popula- 
tions; his  increase  in  civic  value  will  be  quick- 
ened, his  increase  in  numbers  retarded  to  a  rate 
more  like  our  own.  And  neither  all  the  crops 
our  sun-loved  South  can  yield,  nor  all  the  metals 
and  minerals  that  are  under  the  soil  made  sacred 
by  the  blood  of  her  patriots,  can  bring  us  such 
wealth  and  prosperity  as  will  this  change  in  the 
hopes  and  ambitions  of  our  once  unaspiring, 
time-serving  slaves.  The  solid  black  will  be 
solid  no  longer;  but  he  will  still  be  black. 


100  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

X.    THE   GEOGRAPHY   OF    AMALGAMATION. 

Is  it  not  wonderful  ?  A  hundred  years  we 
have  been  fearing  to  do  entirely  right  lest  some- 
thing wrong  should  come  of  it ;  fearing  to  give 
the  black  man  an  equal  chance  with  us  in  the 
race  of  life  lest  we  might  have  to  grapple  with  the 
vast,  vague  afrite  of  Amalgamation  ;  and  in  all 
this  hundred  years,  with  the  enemies  of  slavery 
getting  from  us  such  names  as  negrophiles,  negro- 
worshipers,  and  miscegenationists ;  and  while 
we  were  claiming  to  hold  ourselves  rigidly 
separate  from  the  lower  race  in  obedience  to  a 
natal  instinct  which  excommunicated  them  both 
socially  and  civilly;  just  in  proportion  to  the 
rigor,  the  fierceness,  and  the  injustice  with  which 
this  excommunication  from  the  common  rights 
of  man  has  fallen  upon  the  darker  race,  has 
amalgamation  taken  place.  Look — we  say  again 
— at  the  V/est  Indies.  Then  turn  and  look  at 
those  regions  of  our  common  country  that  we 
have  been  used  to  call  the  nests  of  fanaticism ; 
Philadelphia,  Boston,  Plymouth  Church,  and  the 
like.  Look  at  Oberlin,  Ohio.  For  years  this  place 
was  the  grand  central  depot,  as  one  might  say,  of 
the  "  Underground  Railway  " ;  receiving  and  pas- 
sing on  toward  Canada  and  freedom  thousands 
of  fugitive  slaves;  weeping  over  them,  praying 
over  them,  feeding  them,  housing  them,  hiding 
them  in  her  bosom,  defying  the  law  for  them, 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


101 


educating  them,  calling  them  sir  and  madam, 
braving  no  end  of  public  contumely,  and  show- 
ing them  every  exasperating  consideration.  Look 
at  Berea,  Kentucky,  where  every  kind  thing  con- 
trivable  that,  according  to  our  old  ideas,  could 
destroy  a  white  man's  self-respect  and  "  spoil  a 
nigger  "  has  been  practiced.  What  is  the  final 
fact  ?  Amalgamation  ?  Miscegenation  ?  Not 
at  all.  The  letters  of  the  presidents  of  these  two 
famous  institutions  lie  before  the  present  writer, 
stating  that  from  neither  of  them  throughout 
their  history  has  there  resulted  a  single  union  of 
a  white  with  a  black  person  either  within  their 
precincts  or  elsewhere  within  the  nation's  wide 
boundaries.  And  of  the  two  towns  in  which 
they  are  situated,  in  only  one  have  there  been 
from  first  to  last  three  or  four  such  unions.  How 
have  they  been  kept  apart  ?  By  law  ?  By  fierce 
conventionality  ?  By  instinct  ?  No !  It  was 
because  they  did  not  follow  instinct,  but  the  bet- 
ter dictates  of  reason  and  the  ordinary  natural 
preferences  of  like  for  like.  But,  it  is  sometimes 
asked,  admitting  this  much,  will  not  undivided 
civil  relations  tend  eventually — say  after  a  few 
centuries— to  amalgamation  ?  Idle  question  ! 
Will  it  help  the  matter  to  withhold  men's  mani- 
fest rights  ?  What  can  we  do  better  for  the  re- 
motest future  than  to  be  just  in  the  present  and 
leave  the  rest  to  the  Divine  Rewarder  of  nations 
that  walk  uprightly  ? 


IO2  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


XL    THE   NATURAL-GROWTH    POLICY. 

There  is  a  school  of  thought  in  the  South 
that  stands  midway  between  the  tradition ists  and. 
us.  Its  disciples  have  reasoned  away  the  old 
traditions  and  are  now  hampered  only  by  vague 
ideas  of  inexpediency.  They  pray  everybody 
not  to  hurry.  They  have  a  most  enormous 
capacity  for  pausing  and  considering.  "  It  is  a 
matter,"  says  one  of  them  in  a  late  periodical, 
"  of  centuries  rather  than  decades,  of  evolution 
rather  than  revolution."  The  heartlessness  of 
such  speeches  they  are  totally  unconscious  of. 
Their  prayer  is  not  so  much  that  our  steps  may 
be  logical  as  geological.  They  propose  to  wait 
the  slow  growth  of  civilization  as  if  it  were  the 
growth  of  rocks,  or  as  if  this  were  the  twelfth  or 
thirteenth  century.  They  contemplate  progress 
as  if  it  were  a  planetary  movement  to  be  looked 
at  through  the  telescope.  Why,  we  are  the  mo- 
tive power  of  progress  !  Its  speed  depends  on 
our  courage,  integrity,  and  activity.  It  is  an  in- 
sult to  a  forbearing  God  and  the  civilized  world 
for  us  to  sit  in  full  view  of  moral  and  civil  wrongs 
manifestly  bad  and  curable,  saying  we  must  ex- 
pect this  or  that,  and  that,  geologically  consid- 
ered, we  are  getting  along  quite  rapidly.  Such 
talk  never  won  a  battle  or  a  race,  and  the  hun- 
dred years  past  is  long  enough  for  us  of  the  South 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


103 


to  have  been  content  with  a  speed  that  the  rest 
of  the  civilized  world  has  left  behind.  The  tor- 
toise won  in  the  race  with  the  hare,  the  race 
didn't  win  itself.  We  have  listened  far  too  much 
already  to  those  who  teach  the  safety  of  being 
slow.  "  Make  haste  slowly,"  is  the  true  empha- 
sis. Cannot  these  lovers  of  maxims  appreciate 
that  "  Delays  are  dangerous  "?  For  we  have  a 
case  before  us  wherein  there  is  all  danger  and  no 
safety  in  floating  with  the  tide. 

Our  fathers  had  such  a  case  when  African 
slavery  was  first  fastening  its  roots  about  the 
foundations  of  our  order  of  society.  They  were 
warned  by  their  own  statesmen  to  make  haste 
and  get  rid  of  it.  "  You  must  approach  the  sub- 
ject," cried  the  great  Jefferson.  "  You  must 
adopt  some  plan  of  emancipation  or  worse  will 
follow";  and  all  the  way  down  to  Henry  Clay 
that  warning  was  with  more  or  less  defmiteness 
repeated.  But  our  fathers  were  bitten  with  the 
delusion  of  postponement,  and  the  practice  of 
slavery  became  an  Institution.  It  grew,  until 
every  element  of  force  in  our  civilization — the 
political  arena,  the  sacred  desk,  the  legislative 
hall,  the  academical  chair — all — were  wrapped  in 
its  dark  shadow.  Where  might  not  our  beloved 
South  be  to-day,  far  on  in  front,  but  for  that  sad 
mistake?  At  length,  suddenly,  rudely,  slavery 
was  brought  to  an  end.  What  that  cost  we  all 
know ;  yet  let  us  hope  there  are  many  of  us  who 


104  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

can  say  with  our  sainted  Lee,  not  merely  "  I  am 
rejoiced  that  slavery  is  abolished  "  ;  but  "  I  would 
cheerfully  have  lost  all  I  have  lost  by  the  war, 
and  have  suffered  all  I  have  suffered,  to  have  this 
object  attained."  l 

Such  was  our  fathers'  problem.  The  problem 
before  us  is  the  green,  rank  stump  of  that  felled 
Institution.  Slavery  in  particular — the  slavery 
of  the  individual  man  to  his  one  master,  which 
rested  upon  the  law,  is  by  the  law  abolished. 
Slavery  in  general — the  subordination  of  a  fixed 
ruled  to  a  fixed  ruling  class — the  slavery  of  civil 
caste,  which  can  only  in  part,  and  largely  cannot, 
be  legislated  away,  remains.  Sad  will  it  be  for 
our  children  if  we  leave  it  for  their  inheritance. 

A  Southern  man  traveling  the  North  and  a 
Northern  man  just  returned  from  a  commercial 
tour  of  the  South  lately  fell  into  conversation  on 
a  railway  train.  Said  the  Northerner,  "  What  the 
South  needs  is  to  import  capital,  induce  immigra- 
tion, develop  her  enormous  latent  wealth,  and  let 
politics  alone."  "  Sir,"  said  the  Southerner,  "  I 
know  you  by  that  sign  for  a  commercial  man,  as 
I  might  know  a  hard  student  by  his  glasses  and 
peering  eyes.  With  you  all  things  else  are  sub- 
sidiary to  commerce  ;  hence,  even  commercially, 
you  are  near-sighted.  It  is  true  the  South  should 
seek  those  things  you  mention.  They  are  for 
her  better  safety,  comfort,  and  happiness.  But 
1  See  open  letter  in  THE  CENTURY  for  May,  1885. 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH.  IO5 

what  are  politics  ?  In  this  land,  at  least,  simply 
questions  concerning  the  maintenance  or  increase 
of  our  safety,  comfort,  and  happiness  ;  questions 
that  cannot  be  let  alone,  but  must  be  attended  to 
as  long  as  those  things  demand  to  be  maintained 
or  increased." — The  train  stopped  in  a  depot. 
Men  could  be  heard  under  the  wheels,  tapping 
them  with  their  hammers  to  test  their  soundness. 
— "  To  ask  us  to  let  politics  alone  is  to  ask  us  to 
leave  the  wheels  of  our  train  untested,  its  engine 
unoiled,  its  hot  boxes  glowing,  while  we  scurry 
on  after  more  passengers  and  passengers'  fares ; 
— which  is  just  the  way  not  to  get  them.  Do 
not  ask  it  of  us.  Our  scantiness  of  capital,  mea- 
gerness  of  population,  and  the  undeveloped  con- 
dition of  our  natural  resources  are  largely  owing, 
this  day,  to  our  blindly  insisting  that  certain 
matters  in  our  politics  shall  be  let  alone.  It  was 
our  letting  them  alone  that  brought  Federal  in- 
terference, and  that  interference  has  been  with- 
drawn upon  our  pledge  not  to  let  them  alone  but 
to  settle  them." 

About  a  year  ago  the  present  writer  visited  the 
thriving  town  of  Birmingham,  Alabama.  Its 
smelting  furnaces  were  viewed  with  special  inter- 
est. It  was  fine  to  see  the  crude  ore  of  the  earth, 
so  long  trampled  under  foot,  now  being  turned 
by  great  burnings  and  meltings  into  one  of  the 
prime  factors  of  the  world's  wealth.  But 
another  thought  came  with  this,  at  sight  of  the 
H 


I06  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

dark,  brawny  men  standing  or  moving  here  and 
there  with  the  wild  glare  of  molten  cinder  and 
liquid  metal  falling  upon  their  black  faces  and 
reeking  forms.  These  were  no  longer  simple 
husbandmen,  companions  of  unfretted  nature.  If 
the  subterranean  wealth  of  the  South  is  to  be 
brought  to  the  surface  and  to  market  all  over  the 
land,  as  now  it  is  in  this  miniature  of  the  great 
English  Birmingham  ;  if,  as  seems  inevitable,  the 
black  man  is  to  furnish  the  manual  labor  for  this 
vast  result,  then  how  urgent  is  our  necessity  for 
removing  from  him  all  sense  of  grievance  that  we 
rightly  may  remove,  and  all  impediment  to  his 
every  proper  aspiration,  ere  the  bright,  amiable 
influences  of  green  fields  and  unsoiled  streams,  of 
leafy  woods,  clear  sky,  fragrant  airs,  and  song  of 
birds  pass  out  of  his  life,  and  the  sooty,  hardening, 
dulling  toils  of  the  coal-pit  and  the  furnace,  and 
the  huddled  life  that  goes  with  it,  breed  a  new 
bad  knowledge  of  the  power  of  numbers  and  a 
thirst  for  ferocious  excitements,  and  make  him 
the  dangerous  and^intractable  animal  that  now  he 
is  not.  For  our  own  interests,  one  and  all  of 
them,  we  ought  to  lose  no  time. 

Our  task  is  one  whose  difficulties  can  never  be 
less,  its  facilities  never  be  greater.  We  have  no 
wars  to  distract  and  preoccupy.  Here  is  a  kindly 
race  of  poor  men  unlearned  in  the  evil  charms  of 
unions,  leagues,  secret  orders,  strikes  and  bread- 
riots  ;  looking  not  upon  the  capitalist  as  a  natural 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


ID/ 


enemy ;  stranger  to  all  those  hostilities  against 
the  richer  and  stronger  world  around  them  which 
drive  apart  the  moneyed  man  and  the  laborer 
wherever  living  has  become  a  hard  struggle. 
What  an  opportunity  is  ours  to-day  that  will 
never  return  when  once  it  goes  from  us.  Look 
at  Ireland. 


We  occupy,  moreover,  a  ground  on  which  we 
cannot  remain.  It  is  not  where  we  stood  at  the 
war's  end.  We  approve  the  freedman's  owner- 
ship of  himself.  We  see  and  feel  there  is  no 
going  back  from  universal  suffrage.  And  its 
advocate  may  make  a  point  of  tremendous 
strength  in  the  fact  that  this  very  universality 
of  suffrage  is  what  has  bred  in  the  South  a  new 
sense  of  the  necessity  of  public  education  for  all 
and  of  whatever  else  will  enlighten  and  elevate 
the  lower  mass.  Ignorance,  penury,  unintelli- 
gence,  and  the  vices  that  go  with  them — the 
bonds  that  hold  the  freedman  down  from  beneath 
— we  are  helping  them  to  cast  off.  But  to  cut 
these  loose  and  still  lay  on  the  downward  pres- 
sure of  civil  caste — is  there  any  consistency  in 
this?  We  cannot  do  it  and  respect  our  own 
intelligence.  Socially  we  can  do  nothing  for  the 
freedman  or  against  him  by  rule  or  regulation. 
,That  is  a  matter,  as  we  might  say,  of  specific 
gravity.  But  as  to  his  civil  rights,  we  cannot 


I08  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

stay  where  we  are.     Neither  can  we  go  back- 
ward. 

To  go  forward  we  must  cure  one  of  our  old- 
time  habits — the  habit  of  letting  error  go  uncon- 
tradicted  because  it  is  ours.  It  grew  out  of  our 
having  an  institution  to  defend,  that  made  a 
united  front  our  first  necessity.  We  have  none 
now.  Slavery  is  gone.  State  rights  are  safer  than 
ever  before,  because  better  defined ;  or,  if  unsafe, 
only  because  we  have  grown  loose  on  the  subject 
We  have  nothing  peculiar  left  save  civil  caste. 
Let  us,  neighbor  with  neighbor,  and  friend  with 
friend,  speak  of  it,  think  of  it,  write  of  it,  get  rid 
of  it.  Ruskin's  words  seem  almost  meant  for 
our  moment  and  region :  "  For  now  some  ten  or 
twelve  years,"  he  says,  "  I  have  been  asking  every 
good  writer  whom  I  know  to  write  some  part  of 
what  was  exactly  true,  in  the  greatest  of  the 
sciences,  that  of  Humanity."  We  speak  for 
this  when  we  speak  truly  against  civil  caste.  It 
is  caste  that  the  immortal  Heber  calls  "  a  system 
which  tends  ...  to  destroy  the  feelings  of  gen- 
eral benevolence."  As  far,  then,  as  civil  rights 
are  concerned,  at  least,  let  us  be  rid  of  it.  This 
done,  the  words  North  and  South  shall  mean  no 
more  than  East  or  West,  signifying  only  direc- 
tions and  regions,  and  not  antipodal  ideas  of 
right  and  government ;  and  though  each  of  us 
shall  love  his  own  State  with  ardor,  the  finest 
word  to  our  ear  as  citizens  shall  be  America. 


THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 


I09 


To  America  we  see  irreversibly  assigned  the 
latest,  greatest  task  in  the  "  science  of  Humanity  " : 
to  burst  the  last  chrysalis  of  the  national  relation 
and  consummate  its  last  grand  metamorphosis. 
Once  it  knew  no  wider  bound  than  the  tribal 
relation.  But  the  day  is  on  us  at  length,  the 
problem  is  ours,  and  its  great  weight  and  respon- 
sibility and  the  honor  of  it  when  achieved  rest 
and  will  rest  on  our  Southern  States.  It  is  to 
make  national  harmony  and  unity  broader  than 
race ;  to  crystallize  into  fact  the  truth  that  na- 
tional unity  need  not  demand  unification  of  race ; 
to  band  together — without  one  single  class  disa- 
bility or  privilege  diminishing  or  enhancing  any 
individual's  intrinsic  value — in  that  one  common, 
undistinguished  enjoyment  of  every  human  civil 
right  which  only  can  insure  national  harmony 
and  unity,  two  antipodal  races ;  two  races  that 
have  no  wish  to,  and  for  all  we  know  never  will, 
mingle  their  two  bloods  in  one  stream. 

Nationalization  by  fusion  of  bloods  is  the 
maxim  of  barbarous  times  and  peoples.  Na- 
tionalization without  racial  confusion  is  ours  to 
profess  and  to  procure.  It  is  not  a  task  of  our 
choosing.  But  our  fathers,  unawares,  entailed  it 
upon  us,  and  we  cannot  but  perform  it.  We 
cannot  hold  American  principles  in  perfect  faith 
and  not  do  it.  The  good  doctrine  of  liberty  to 
all  and  license  to  none  thrusts  it  inevitably  into 
our  hands.  To  make  national  unity  without 


I IO  THE  SILENT  SOUTH. 

hybridity — the  world  has  never  seen  it  done  as 
we  have  got  to  do  it ;  but  it  is  the  business  of 
every  generation  that  comes  into  the  world  to 
bring  into  it  better  things  than  it  has  ever  seen. 
We  have  got  to  build  a  nationality  as  free  from 
all  civil  estrangement  as  from  social  confusion, 
yet  wider  than  the  greatest  divergence  of  human 
races.  This  is  the  meaning  of  the  great  revolu- 
tion upon  us  to-day.  Daily  the  number  increases 
of  those  who  grasp  it.  A  little  while  ago  the 
whole  nation  rejected  it.  To  reject  it  to-day  is 
to  be  left  behind  the  nation's  best  thought.  How 
fast  that  thought  is  spreading  in  the  South  few 
know.  Like  the  light  of  kindling  watch-fires  it 
is  catching  from  mind  to  mind.  The  best  men 
of  the  South  are  coming  daily  into  convictions 
that  condemn  their  own  beliefs  of  yesterday  as 
the  antiquated  artillery  of  an  outgrown  past; 
and  to  the  present  writer,  as  one  who  himself 
found  this  not  easy,  but  hard,  to  do,  it  seems  no 
improbability  that  our  traditionist  friends,  even 
before  this  reply  can  reach  them,  may  be  found 
ranging  themselves  among  that  number,  for  the 
promotion  of  this  revolution  that  everybody 
knows  must  come.  To  say  what  must,  is  to  say 
what  will  be ;  and  so  shall  the  reproach  of 
slavery,  the  greatest  moral  mistake  made  by  the 
whole  American  nation,  be  swallowed  up  in  the 
honor  of  this  noble  gain  for  the  cause  of 
humanity  and  universal  peace. 


THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM  IN 
THE  SOUTHERN  STATES. 


THE   CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM  IN 
THE  SOUTHERN  STATES.1 

I.    A   MODEL   PRISON. 

HERE  and  there  in  the  United  States  a  penal 
institution  may  be  found  that  fairly  earns 
the  pride  with  which  it  is  pointed  out  by  the 
surrounding  community.  In  the  whole  country 
there  may  be  four  or  five  such.  The  visitor  to 
them  admires  the  fitness  of  their  architecture. 

"Yes,"  the  warden  replies;  "this  is  not  a  house 
of  pleasure,  and  so  we  have  not  made  it  pretty. 
It  is  not  an  abode  of  crime,  and  so  we  have  not 
made  it  ugly.  It  is  not  a  place  where  men  seek 
justice,  and  therefore  we  have  not  made  it  gran- 
diose and  majestic.  But  it  is  the  house  of  chas- 
tisement,— of  chastening  punishment,-^and  so  it 
is  made  solemn,  severe,  and  calm." 

The  visitor  praises  the  grave  and  silent  decency 
of  all  the  internal  appointments. 

lrThis  essay  was  first  printed  in  1883;  but  although  it  was 
followed  by  many  efforts  for  reform,  they  have  failed  because  of 
the  political  power  of  the  "penitentiary  rings,"  and  except  a  very 
inadequate  and  it  is  to  be  feared,  momentary,  alternative  in 
Texas  no  changes  of  moment  have  taken  place  to  put  these  pages 
materially  out  of  date.  (November,  1885.) 

15  H3 


H4  THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 

"  Yes,"  responds  the  warden ;  "  the  peace  and 
dignity  of  the  State  are  here  asserting  themselves 
over  the  person  of  the  prisoner  who  has  violated 
them ;  there  is  no  more  room  here  for  merriment 
or  confusion  than  for  strife." 

The  visitor  extols  the  perfection  of  the  sanitary 
arrangements. 

"  Yes,"  says  the  warden ;  "when  the  criminal 
was  free  and  his  life  at  his  own  disposal,  he  took 
no  such  care  of  it  as  this.  He  probably  lived  a 
sort  of  daily  suicide.  If  he  shortened  his  days, 
the  State  was,  presumably,  not  to  blame.  But 
if  we  by  malice  or  neglect  shorten  his  days  here, 
where  he  is  our  captive,  we  bring  upon  the  State 
both  blame  and  shame.  For  his  life  is  in  our 
custody,  just  as  the  clothing  is  with  which  he 
came  here ;  the  State,  through  its  courts,  has 
distinctly  declined  to  tamper  with  it,  and  holds 
it  subject  to  be  returned  to  his  own  keeping,  at 
the  expiration  of  his  confinement,  in  as  good  order 
as  that  in  which  it  was  received,  the  inevitable  wear 
and  tear  of  time  alone  excepted.  Can  the  State 
maintain  its  peace  and  dignity  as  it  should  that 
commits  breaches  of  trust  inside  its  very  prisons  ?  " 

The  visitor  remarks  that  a  wise  benevolence  is 
necessary  even  toward  bad  men. 

"  But,"  says  the  other,  "  it  is  not  merely  be- 
nevolence to  bad  men  that  puts  in  these  elaborate 
sanitary  appliances ;  it  is  the  necessity  of  up- 
holding the  integrity  and  honor  of  the  State." 


IN  THE  SOUTHERN  STA TES.  j  j  5 

The  visitor  shows  his  surprise  at  the  absence 
of  all  the  traditional  appliances  for  the  correction 
of  the  refractory.  "  Yet  be  certain,"  is  the  re- 
joinder, "a  discipline,  sure,  prompt,  and  effectual 
meets  every  infraction  of  rules.  How  else  could 
we  have  this  perfection  of  order  ?  But  it  is  a 
discipline  whose  punishments  are  free  from  bru- 
talizing tendencies,  increasing  dispassionately  as 
the  culprit's  passions  increase,  and  relenting  only 
when  he  has  repented."  J 

The  visitor  is  impressed  with  the  educative 
value  of  the  labor  performed  by  the  inmates. 

"  Yes,"  says  the  warden ;  "  send  a  man  out 
from  here  with  knowledge  of  a  trade,  and  may 
be  he  will  come  back,  but  the  chances  are  he 
will  not  Send  him  away  without  a  trade,  and 
may  be  he  will  not  come  back,  but  the  chances 
are  he  will.  So,  for  society's  sake, — in  the  com- 
munity's interest  and  for  its  safety, — these  men 
are  taught  certain  trades  that  they  cannot  turn 
to  bad  account.  We  do  not  teach  burglars  lock- 
smithing." 

Yet  the  visitor  takes  a  momentary  alarm. 

1 "  Good  order  and  discipline  have  been  maintained  during  the 
past  year.  There  has  not  been  one  case  of  insubordination  or 
gross  violation  of  any  of  the  rules  of  the  prison  government; 
not  one  case  that  required  punishment,  either  for  the  purpose  of 
maintaining  discipline  or  as  penalty  for  an  offense  committed  by 
an  individual  prisoner." — "Annual  Report  of  the  Inspectors  of 
the  State  Penitentiary,  Eastern  District,  Pennsylvania,  1882," 
p.  89. 


!  x6  THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 

"  You  put  the  housebreaker  and  the  robber, 
the  sneak-thief  and  the  pickpocket  into  open 
competition  with  honest  men  in  the  community 
around  them." 

"  Exactly,"  responds  the  other ;  "  trying  to  live 
without  competing  in  the  fields  of  productive 
labor  is  just  the  essence  of  the  crimes  for  which 
they  were  sent  here.  We  make  a  short  end  of 
that" 

•    The  visitor  looks  with  pleased  interest  at  the 
statistical  records  of  the  clerk's  office. 

"  We  could  not  call  our  duty  done  without 
these,"  is  the  warden's  response.  "  These  are  the 
keys  to  the  study  of  the  cause  and  prevention 
of  crime.  By  these  we  weigh  our  own  results. 
By  these  we  uncover  not  only  the  convict  and 
his  crime,  but  society's  and  the  State's  own  sins 
of  omission  and  commission,  whose  fruits  are 
these  crimes  and  these  criminals." 

"After  all,"  at  length  the  visitor  says,  "  tell  me 
one  thing  more.  Here  where  a  prisoner  is  safe 
from  fire  and  plague  and  oppression  and  tempta- 
tion and  evil  companionship,  and  is  taught  thrift 
and  skill,  and  has  only  to  submit  to  justice  and 
obey  right  rules,  where  is  his  punishment?  How 
is  this  punishment  at  all  ?  " 

And  the  warden  makes  answer  with  question 
for  question  :  "  Had  you  a  deformed  foot,  and 
an  iron  mold  were  made  to  close  around  it  and 
press  it  into  symmetrical  shape  and  hold  it  so, 


IN  THE  SOUTHERN  STATES. 


117 


would  you  ask  where  is  the  agony  ?  The  pun- 
ishment here  is  the  punishment  of  a  deformed 
nature  forced  into  superficial  symmetry.  It  is 
the  punishment  that  captivity  is  to  unrestraint ; 
that  subordination  and  enforced  self-control  are 
to  ungoverned  passion  and  inordinate  vanity  and 
pride ,  that  routine  is  to  the  love  of  idle  adven- 
ture ;  that  decorum  is  to  the  love  of  orgies  ;  that 
temperance  is  to  the  love  of  drink ;  that  loneli- 
ness is  to  the  social  and  domestic  impulses  ;  that 
solitude  and  self-communion  are  to  remorse.  It 
is  all  the  losses  and  restraints  of  banishment, 
without  one  of  its  liberties.  Nothing  tempers  it 
but  the  repentance  and  reform  which  it  induces, 
and  these  temper  it  just  in  degree  as  they  are 
genuine  and  thorough." 

"  And  your  actual  results  ?  "  asks  the  visitor. 

"  Of  those  who  come  here  for  their  first  offense, 
a  majority  return  to  honest  life." 

"  You  have  a  model  prison." 

"  No,"  says  the  warden,  "  not  yet." 

II.    THE   THEORY   OF   SELF-SUPPORT. 

Now,  the  number  of  such  prisons  in  America, 
we  say,  may  be  counted  on  the  fingers  of  one 
hand.  Communities  rarely  allow  the  prison  its 
rightful  place  among  their  investments  of  public 
money  for  the  improvement  of  public  morals  and 
public  safety.  Its  outlays  are  begrudged  because 


THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 

they  do  not  yield  cash  incomes  equal  to  their 
cash  expenses.  Legislatures,  public  schools, 
courts  of  justice,  and  departments  of  police  are 
paid  for  by  the  people  in  the  belief  that  they  will 
and  must  be  made  to  yield  conditions  and 
results  necessary  to  be  obtained,  for  whose 
absence  no  saving  of  public  wealth  can  atone, 
and  that  ultimately,  though  indirectly,  even  on 
their  pecuniary  side,  they  are  emphatically  pro- 
fitable. But  when  it  is  asked  by  what  course  of 
reasoning  the  prison  is  left  out  of  this  count, 
there  is  heard  only,  as  one  may  say,  a  motion  to 
adjourn.  Society  is  not  ready  for  the  question. 

The  error  is  a  sad  one,  and  is  deeply  rooted. 
And  yet  it  is  a  glaring  one.  A  glance  at  the 
subject  is  enough  to  show  that  unless  the  money 
laid  out  in  prisons  is  devoted  to  some  end  far 
better  than  the  mere  getting  it  back  again,  then 
legislatures,  public  schools,  courts,  and  police  all 
are  shortened  in  their  results,  and  a  correspond- 
ing part  of  their  expenses  is  rightly  chargeable 
to  the  mismanaged  prison.  The  prison  is  an  in- 
separable part  of  the  system  ;  and  the  idea  that 
the  prison  must  first  of  all  pay  back  dollar  for 
dollar,  if  logically  pushed  on  through  the  system, 
would  close  public  schools,  adjourn  courts  of 
justice,  dissolve  legislatures,  and  disband  police. 
For  not  one  of  these  could  exist  on  a  "  self-sup- 
porting "  basis. 

Oftener,  probably,  than  from  any  other  one 


IN  THE  SOUTHERN  STA  TES. 

source,  this  mistake  springs  from  the  indolent 
assumption  that  the  call  to  make  prisons  what 
they  ought  to  be  is  merely  an  appeal  to  public 
benevolence.  It  was  so,  in  their  earlier  turn, 
with  public  hospitals  and  public  schools ;  and 
the  effect  was  similar.  For  only  here  and  there, 
if  at  all,  did  they  find  their  best  efficiency  or  a 
true  public  support,  until  society  rose  to  the 
noble  modesty  that  recognized  them  not  as  public 
charities,  but  as  public  interests.  The  manage- 
ment of  a  State's  convicts  is  a  public  interest 
that  still  waits  for  the  same  sort  of  recognition 
and  treatment.  In  many  directions  this  has 
been  partly  conceded ;  but  there  are  few,  if  any, 
other  State  executives  who  would  undertake  to 
echo  the  lately  uttered  words  of  that  one  who  said : 

"  In  neither  of  the  penitentiaries  of  this  State  has  there  ever 
been  an  attempt  yet  made  to  administer  them  on  the  vulgar, 
wicked,  unworthy  consideration  of  making  them  self-sustaining. 
In  neither  of  them  has  it  been  forgotten  that  even  the  convict  is 
a  human  being,  and  that  his  body  and  soul  are  not  so  the  prop- 
erty of  the  State  that  both  may  be  crushed  out  in  the  effort  to 
reimburse  the  State  the  cost  of  his  scanty  food,  and,  at  the  end 
of  his  term,  what  then  is  left  of  him  be  dismissed,  an  enemy  of 
human  society." 

The  two  dissimilar  motives  here  implied  govern 
the  management  of  most  American  prisons.  In 
a  few  of  the  foremost  effort  is  to  make  them 
yield,  by  a  generous,  judicious  control,  every 
result  worth,  to  society's  best  interests,  the  money 


120 


THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 


paid  for  it ;  that  is,  to  treat  them  as  a  public 
interest.  In  a  much  larger  number  it  is  to  seek 
such,  and  only  such,  good  results  as  may  be  got 
without  an  appreciable  excess  of  expense  over 
income ;  that  is,  to  treat  them  as  appeals — and 
unworthy  appeals — to  the  public  charity.  One 
motive  demands  first  of  all  the  largest  results, 
the  other  the  smallest  net  expense.  They  give 
rise  to  two  systems  of  management,  each  of 
which,  in  practice,  has  its  merits  and  drawbacks, 
and  is  more  or  less  effectively  carried  out, 
according  to  the  hands  and  minds  under  which 
it  falls.  These  are  known  as  the  Public  Ac- 
counts System  and  the  Contract  System.1  Each 
has  its  advocates  among  students  of  prison 
science,  and  it  is  not  the  province  of  this  paper 
further  to  press  the  contrast  between  them.  It 
is  truly  the  country's  misfortune  that  in  several 
States  there  is  a  third  system  in  operation,  a 
knowledge  of  whose  real  workings  can  fill  the 
mind  of  any  good  citizen  only  with  astonishment 
and  indignant  mortification. 

By  either  of  the  two  systems  already  named, 

1  The  Contract  System  is  often  miscalled  by  the  public  press 
the  Convict  Lease  System.  But  the  Contract  System  merely, 
under  careful  restrictions,  leases  the  convicts'  labor  within  the 
prison  walls  during  certain  hours  of  the  day  and  is  entirely  sub- 
ordinated to  the  official  management  of  the  prison.  While 
under  the  Convict  Lease  System  the  prison,  the  prisoner  and  the 
prison  management  are  all  farmed  out  into  private  control  and  an 
intelligent  reformatory  system  is  impossible. 


IN  THE  SO UTHERN  STA  TES.  j  2 1 

the  Public  Accounts  System  and  the  Contract 
System,  the  prison  remains  in  charge  of  State 
officials,  the  criminals  are  kept  continually  within 
the  prison  walls,  and  the  prison  discipline  rests 
intact.  All  the  appliances  for  labor — the  work- 
shops, tools,  engines,  and  machinery — are  pro- 
vided by  the  State,  and  the  convicts  labor  daily, 
prosecuting  various  industries,  in  the  Public  Ac- 
counts System  under  their  official  overseers,  and 
in  the  Contract  System  under  private  contractors. 
In  degrees  of  more  or  less  excellence,  these  in- 
dustrial operations,  whether  under  official  direc- 
tors or  contractors,  are  carefully  harmonized  with 
those  features  of  the  prison  management  that 
look  to  the  secure  detention,  the  health,  the  dis- 
cipline, and  the  moral  reformation  of  the  prisoner, 
the  execution  of  the  law's  sentence  upon  him  in 
its  closest  and  furthest  intent,  and,  if  possible, 
his  return  to  the  outer  world,  when  he  must  be 
returned,  a  more  valuable  and  less  dangerous 
man,  impressed  with  the  justice  of  his  punish- 
ment, and  yet  a  warning  to  evil-doers.  It  is  the 
absence  of  several  of  these  features,  and  some- 
times of  all,  that  makes  the  wide  difference  be- 
tween these  methods  on  the  one  hand  and  the 
mode  of  prison  management  known  as  the  Lease 
System  on  the  other. 


16 


122  THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 


III.    EVIL   PRINCIPLES    OF   THE   LEASE   SYSTEM. 

Its  features  vary  in  different  regions.  In  some, 
the  State  retains  the  penitentiary  in  charge  of  its 
officers,  and  leases  out  the  convicts  in  gangs  of 
scores  or  hundreds  to  persons  who  use  them 
anywhere  within  the  State  boundaries  in  the 
execution  of  private  enterprises  or  public  or 
semi-public  works.  In  a  few  cases  the  peniten- 
tiary itself,  its  appliances  and  its  inmates,  all  and 
entire,  are  leased,  sometimes  annually  or  bien- 
nially, sometimes  for  five  and  sometimes  for  ten 
or  even  twenty  years,  and  the  convicts  worked 
within  or  without  the  prison  walls,  and  near  to 
or  distant  from  them,  as  various  circumstances 
may  regulate,  being  transferred  from  place  to 
place  in  companies  under  military  or  semi-mili- 
tary guard,  and  quartered  in  camps  or  herded  in 
stockades  convenient  to  their  fields  of  labor.  In 
two  or  three  States  the  Government's  abandon- 
ment of  its  trust  is  still  more  nearly  complete, 
the  terms  of  the  lease  going  so  far  as  to  assign 
to  the  lessees  the  entire  custody  and  discipline 
of  the  convicts,  and  even  their  medical  and  sur- 
gical care.  But  a  clause  common  to  all  these 
prison  leases  is  that  which  allows  a  portion,  at 
least,  and  sometimes  all  of  the  prisoners  to  be 
worked  in  parts  of  the  State  remote  from  the 
prison.  The  fitness  of  some  lessees  to  hold  such 


IN  THE  SOUTHERN  STATES.  12$ 

a  trust  may.be  estimated  from  the  spirit  of  the 
following  letters  : 

"  OFFICE  OF  LESSEE  ARKANSAS  STATE  PENITENTIARY, 

"LITTLE  ROCK,  ARKANSAS,  January  12,  1882. 
"DEAR  SIR:    Your  postal  of  request  to  hand;  sorry  to  say 
cannot  send  you  report,  as  there  are  none  given.     The  business 
of  the  Arkansas  State  Penitentiary  is  of  a  private  nature,  and  no 
report  is  made  to  the  public.     Any  private  information  relative 
to  the  men  will  be  furnished  upon  application  for  same. 
"  Very  respectfully, 

"  ZEE  WARD,  Lessee. 
"Z.  J." 

"  OFFICE  OF  LESSEE  ARKANSAS  STATE  PENITENTIARY, 
"  LITTLE  ROCK,  ARKANSAS,  July  2,  1882. 

"DEAR  SIR:    Yours  of date   to  hand  and   fully  noted. 

Your  inquiries,  if  answered,  would  require  much  time  and 
labor.  I  am  sole  lessee,  and  work  all  the  convicts,  and  of 
course  the  business  of  the  prison  is  my  private  business.  My 
book-keeper  is  kept  quite  busy  with  my  business,  and  no  time  to 
make  out  all  the  queries  you  ask  for.  Similar  information  is 
given  to  the  Legislature  once  in  two  years. 

"  Respectfully, 

"ZEB.  WARD." 

The  wonder  is  that  such  a  scheme  should  not, 
upon  its  face,  be  instantly  rejected  by  any  but  the 
most  sordid  and  short-sighted  minds.  It  is  diffi- 
cult to  call  its  propositions  less  than  an  insult  to 
the  intelligence  and  humanity  of  any  enlightened 
community.  It  was  a  Governor  of  Kentucky 
who,  in  1873,  justly  said  to  his  State  Legislature: 
"  I  cannot  but  regard  the  present  system  under 
which  the  State  penitentiary  is  leased  and 


124 


THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 


managed  as  a  reproach  to  the  commonwealth. 
...  It  is  the  system,  not  the  officer  acting  under 
it,  with  which  I  find  fault." l 

This  system  springs  primarily  from  the  idea 
that  the  possession  of  a  convict's  person  is  an 
opportunity  for  the  State  to  make  money ;  that 
the  amount  to  be  made  is  whatever  can  be 
wrung  from  him ;  that  for  the  officers  of  the 
State  to  waive  this  opportunity  is  to  impose  upon 
the  clemency  of  a  tax -paying  public ;  and  that, 
without  regard  to  moral  or  mortal  consequences, 
the  penitentiary  whose  annual  report  shows  the 
largest  cash  balance  paid  into  the  State's  treasury 
is  the  best  penitentiary.  The  mitigations  that 
arise  in  its  practice  through  the  humane  or 
semi-humane  sentiments  of  keepers  and  guards, 
and  through  the  meagerest  of  legislation,  are 
few,  scanty,  and  rare ;  and  in  the  main  the  notion 
is  clearly  set  forth  and  followed  that  a  convict, 
whether  pilferer  or  murderer,  man,  woman,  or 
child,  has  almost  no  human  right  that  the  State 
is  bound  to  be  at  any  expense  to  protect. 

It  hardly  need  be  said  that  the  system  is  not 
in  operation  by  reason  of  any  malicious  public 
intention.  On  the  part  of  lessees  there  is  a  most 
unadmirable  spirit  of  enterprise.  On  the  part 
of  State  officials  there  is  a  very  natural  eager- 
ness to  report  themselves  as  putting  money 

1  Quoted  in  "  Transactions  of  the  National  Prison  Congress, 
St.  Louis,  1874,"  p.  325. 


IN  THE  SO UTHERN  STA  TES.  x  2  5 

into  the  treasury,  and  a  low  estimate  of  pub- 
lic sentiment  and  intelligence.  In  the  people 
at  large  there  is  little  more  than  a  listless  ob- 
livion, that  may  be  reprehensible,  but  is  not  in- 
tentional, unless  they  are  to  be  judged  by  the  acts 
of  their  elected  legislators,  a  rule  by  which  few 
communities  would  stand  unaccused.  At  any 
rate,  to  fall  into  the  error  is  easy.  Outlays  for 
the  maintenance  of  police  and  courts  are  followed 
with  a  jealous  eye.  Expense  and  danger  keep 
the  public  on  the  alert.  Since  neither  police  nor 
courts  can  pay  back  in  money,  they  must  pay 
back  in  protection  and  in  justice.  The  accused 
of  crime  must  be  arrested,  the  innocent  acquitted 
and  exonerated,  and  the  guilty  sentenced  to  the 
penalties  of  the  laws  they  have  violated.  But  just 
here  the  careless  mind  slips  into  the  mistake  that 
the  end  is  reached;  that  to  punish  crime,  no 
matter  how,  is  to  deter  crime ;  that  when  broken 
laws  are  avenged  that  is  the  end;  that  it  is  enough 
to  have  the  culprit  in  limbo,  if  only  he  is  made  to 
suffer  and  not  to  cost.  Hence  the  public  resolve, 
expressed  and  enforced  through  legislators  and 
executive  officers,  to  spend  no  more  money  on 
the  criminal  than  will  promptly  come  back  in 
cash — nay,  worse,  to  make  him  pay  in  advance  ; 
and  hence,  too,  a  total  disregard  of  all  other  results 
for  good  or  bad  that  may  be  issuing  from  the 
prison  walls.  Thus  it  follows  that  that  arm  of 
the  public  service  by  whose  workings  a  large  part 


126  THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 

of  all  the  immense  labor  and  expenses  of  police 
and  courts  must  become  either  profitable  or  un- 
profitable is  handed  over  to  the  system  which, 
whatever  else  of  profound  mischief  its  annual 
tables  may  betray  or  conceal,  will  show  the 
smartest  results  on  the  cash-book.  And  thus  we 
see,  annually  or  biennially,  the  governors  of  some 
of  our  States  congratulating  their  legislatures 
upon  the  fact  that,  by  farming  out  into  private 
hands  whose  single  motive  is  money  the  most 
delicate  and  difficult  task  in  the  whole  public 
service,  that  task  is  changed  from  an  outlay  that 
might  have  been  made  nobly  advantageous  into 
a  shameful  and  disastrous  source  of  revenue. 

IV.    IN   TENNESSEE THE   SYSTEM    AT    ITS    BEST. 

If,  now,  we  are  to  begin  a  scrutiny  of  this  evil, 
we  shall  do  well  to  regard  it  first  as  it  presents 
itself  in  its  least  offensive  aspect.  To  do  this,  we 
turn  to  the  State  prison,  or  prisons  of  Tennessee. 

The  State  holds  in  confinement  about  one 
thousand  three  hundred  convicts.  The  peni- 
tentiary is  at  Nashville,  the  capital.  On  the  5th 
of  December,  1881,  its  workshops  were  acciden- 
tally destroyed  by  fire,  and  those  which  have 
taken  their  place  are,  if  we  may  accept  the  warden's 
judgment,  the  finest  south  of  the  Ohio  River.1 

1  Unfortunately  for  this  pardonable  boast,  the  boundary  given 
cuts  off  all  State  prisons  that  exclude  the  lease  management,  ex- 
cept one  small  institution  in  West  Virginia. 


IN  THE  SOUTHERN  STA  TES.  \ 27 

An  advertisement  from  the  Secretary  of  State,  in 
a  New  Orleans  paper  of  June  14,  1883,  invites 
bids  for  a  six  years'  lease  of  the  "  Penitentiary  of 
Tennessee  and  the  labor  of  the  convicts,  together 
with  the  building,  quarry-grounds,  fixtures,  ma- 
chinery, tools,  engines,  patterns,  etc.,  belonging  to 
the  State."  It  is  there  asserted  that  the  peniten- 
tiary has  been  conducted  on  this  plan  already  for 
a  number  of  years.  The  State's  official  prison 
inspectors  remark,  in  their  report  of  December 
30,  1882:  "The  Lease  System,  during  our  term 
of  office,  has  worked  harmoniously  and  without 
the  least  scandal  or  cause  for  interference  on 
the  part  of  the  inspectors.  Rentals  have  been 
promptly  paid,  and  the  prisoners  worked  in 
accordance  with  law  and  most  humanely  treated. 
.  .  To  our  minds  there  can  be  no  valid  objection 
raised  to  the  Lease  System,  under  proper  restric- 
tions, especially  if  as  well  conducted  as  for  the  past 
few  years."  They  add  the  one  reason  for  this  con- 
viction, but  for  which,  certainly,  there  would  be 
none :  "  A  fixed  revenue  is  assured  to  the  State 
every  year  under  the  lease  plan,  as  against  an 
annual  outlay  under  State  management."  The 
advertisement  shows  one  feature  in  the  system 
in  Tennessee  which  marks  it  as  superior  to  its 
application  in  most  other  States  that  practice  it : 
the  lessees  employ  such  convicts  as  are  retained 
"in  the  prison  building  at  Nashville  (many  of 
whom  are  skilled  laborers  and  of  long-term  sen- 


128  THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 

tence)  in  manufacturing  wagons,  iron  hollow-ware, 
furniture,  etc."  The  terms  of  the  lease  are  re- 
quired to  be  "  not  less  than  one  hundred  thou- 
sand dollars  per  annum,  payable  quarterly,  clear 
of  all  expenses  to  the  State  on  any  account  ex- 
cept the  salaries  of  the  superintendent,  warden, 
assistant-warden,  surgeon,  and  chaplain,  which 
are  to  be  paid  by  the  State." 

Here,  then,  is  the  Lease  System  at  its  best. 
Let  us  now  glance  in  upon  it  for  a  moment 
through  its  own  testimony,  as  found  in  the  offi- 
cial report  of  its  operations  during  the  two  years 
ending  December  I,  1882.  At  the  close  of  that 
term  the  State  held  in  custody  1336  convicts. 
Of  these,  685  were  at  work  in  the  penitentiary, 
28  were  employed  in  a  railway  tunnel,  34  were 
at  work  on  a  farm,  89  on  another  farm,  30  in  a 
coal-mine,  145  in  another  coal-mine,  and  325  in 
still  another.  In  short,  nearly  half  the  convicts 
are  scattered  about  in  "  branch  prisons,"  and  the 
facts  that  can  be  gathered  concerning  them  are 
only  such  as  are  given  or  implied  in  the  most 
meager  allusions.  It  appears  that  they  are 
worked  in  gangs  surrounded  by  armed  guards, 
and  the  largest  company,  at  least, — the  three 
hundred  and  twenty-five, — quartered  in  a  mere 
stockade.  As  the  eye  runs  down  the  table  of 
deaths,  it  finds  opposite  the  names,  among  other 
mortal  causes,  the  following:  Found  dead. 
Killed.  Drowned.  Not  given.  Blank.  Blank^ 


IN  THE  SOUTHERN  STATES.  I2Q 

Blank.  Killed.  Blank.  Shot.  Killed.  Blank. 
Blank.  Killed.  Killed.  Blank.  Blank.  Blank. 
Killed.  Blank.  Blank.1  The  warden  of  the  peni- 
tentiary states  that,  "  in  sending  convicts  to  the 
branch  prisons,  especial  care  is  taken  to  prevent 
the  sending  of  any  but  able-bodied  men  " ;  and 
that  "  it  has  also  been  the  custom  to  return  the 
invalid  and  afflicted  convicts  from  the  branch 
prisons  to  this  prison  " — the  penitentiary.  Yet 
the  report  shows  heavy  rates  of  mortality  at  these 
branch  prisons,  resulting  largely  from  such  lin- 
gering complaints  as  dropsy,  scrofula,  etc.,  and 
more  numerously  by  consumption  than  by  any 
one  thing  else  except  violence ;  rates  of  mortality 
startlingly  large  compared  with  the  usual  rates 
of  well-ordered  prisons,  and  low  only  in  compari- 
son with  those  of  other  prisons  worked  under 
the  hands  of  lessees. 

The  annual  reports  (taken  as  they  could  be  pro- 
cured, one  for  1880,  three  for  1881,  and  one  for 
1882)  of  five  of  the  largest  prisons  in  the  United 
States  show  that,  from  the  aggregate  population 
of  those  prisons,  numbering  5300  convicts,  there 
escaped  during  twelve  months  but  one  prisoner. 
In  all  the  State  prisons  of  the  country  not  kept 

aOne  might  hope  these  blanks  were  but  omissions  of  ditto 
marks,  although  such  murks  are  not  lacking  where  required  in 
other  parts  of  the  table ;  but  the  charitable  assumption  fails  when 
it  would  require  us  to  supply  them  under  "  Sunstroke "  and 
opposite  the  date  of  December. 

17 


130 


THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 


by  the  Lease  System,  with  a  population,  at  dates 
of  reports,  of  18,400,  there  escaped  in  one  year 
only  63.     But  in  the  one  year  ending  December 
I,  1 88 1,  there  escaped,  from  an  average  popula- 
tion of  about  630  convicts  at  these  Tennessee 
"  branch  prisons,"  49  prisoners.    Or,  rather,  there 
were  49  escapes ;  for  some  convicts  escaped  and 
were  recaptured  more  than  once  or  twice.     The 
following  year  they  numbered  50.     If  the  tables 
in  the  report  were  correct, — it  will  be  shown  they 
are  not, — we  should  know  that  the  recaptures  in 
the  two  years  were  about  forty ;  but  that  which 
is  not  known  is,  what  public  and  private  expense 
in  depredations  on  the  one  hand  and  the  main- 
tenance of  police  on  the  other,  these  ninety-nine 
escaped  robbers,  burglars,  house-burners,  horse- 
thieves,  and  swindlers,  and  these  forty  recaptures, 
have  caused  and  are  still  causing.     The  super- 
intendent of  prisons,  making  exception,  it  is  true, 
of  one  small  establishment  of  less  than  a  hundred 
population,  whence  over  a  third  of  these  escapes 
were  made,  says  the  deputy  wardens  in  charge 
"  deserve   credit   for   the  manner  in  which  they 
have  carried  out  his  instructions."     Such  is  one 
feature  of  the   Lease  System   under  an  excep- 
tionally good  administration  of  it.     What  a  con- 
dition it  had  but  lately  come  out  of  may  be  in- 
ferred  from   three    lines   found  in    the  warden's 
report   of  the   Texas  penitentiary  in   1880:    "I 
noticed  in  a  recent  Tennessee  report  that,  from 


IN  THE  SO  UTHERN  STA  TES.  1 3 1 

an  average  force  of  less  than  600  convicts,  there 
were  257  escapes  in  two  years." 

The  convict  quarters  in  the  main  prison,  at 
Nashville,  are  three  separate  stone  wings,  in  each 
of  which  the  cells  rise  one  above  another  in  four 
tiers.  The  total  number  of  cells  is  352.  They 
are  of  three  sizes.  According  to  modern  sanitary 
knowledge,  a  sleeping-room  should  never  contain 
less  than  800  cubic  feet  of  air  to  each  occupant ; 
but,  of  these  cells,  120  contain,  each  only  309 
cubic  feet  of  space;  another  120  contain,  each, 
but  175  feet;  the  remaining  112  contain  but  162 
feet  each ;  and  nearly  every  one  of  these  cells 
has  two  inmates.  Thus  a  majority  of  the  inmates- 
are  allowed  an  air  space  at  night  less  than  the 
cubic  contents  of  a  good-sized  grave.  The  phy- 
sician of  the  penitentiary  reports  that  the  air 
breathed  in  these  cells  is  "almost  insupportable." 
He  says  of  the  entire  establishment,  "  No  amount 
of  remodeling  or  tinkering  can  make  it  comfort- 
able or  healthy."  The  hospital  he  and  others  re- 
port as  badly  constructed  and  too  small.  "  There 
is  no  place  for  dressing  the  dead  except  in  the 
presence  of  all  the  sick  in  the  hospital,  or  in  the 
wing  in  the  presence  of  more  than  two  hundred 
convicts."  Other  details  are  too  revolting  for 
popular  reading. 

The  female  department  of  the  prison  "  over- 
looks the  prison  yard  in  plain  view  and  hearing 
of  the  male  convicts."  "  No  woman,"  says  the 


132 


THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 


warden,  "  should  be  sentenced  to  the  Tennessee 
penitentiary  until  the  State  makes  better  provision 
for  their  care."  "  Had  I  the  pardoning  power,  I 
would  reprieve  every  woman  now  in  the  peniten- 
tiary and  those  who  may  be  sentenced,  until  the 
State  can  or  will  provide  a  place  to  keep  them,  in 
keeping  with  the  age  in  which  we  live."  The 
chaplain  reports  these  women  as  having  "aban- 
doned all  hope  and  given  up  to  utter  despair, 
their  conversation  obscene  and  filthy,  and  their 
conduct  controlled  by  their  unrestrained  pas- 
sions." He  indicates  that  he  has  abandoned  all 
spiritual  and  moral  effort  among  them ;  but,  it  is 
to  be  regretted,  does  not  state  by  what  right  he 
has  done  so. 

The  discipline  of  this  main  prison,  as  of  the 
"  branches,"  seems  to  be  only  such  as  provides 
for  efficiency  in  labor  and  against  insurrection 
and  escape.  The  warden's  report  intimates  that 
modes  of  punishment  of  refractory  prisoners  are 
left  "to  the  discretion  of  wardens  and  inspectors." 
"  When  the  labor  is  hired  out,"  he  says,  "  the 
lessee  demands  punishment  that  will  not  cause 
him  to  lose  the  labor  of  the  man."  Thus  he  lays 
his  finger  upon  the  fact  that  the  very  nature  of 
the  Lease  System  tends  to  banish  all  the  most 
salutary  forms  of  correction  from  the  prison  man- 
agement. "  Under  the  present  laws  and  custom," 
says  this  warden,  "  the  Tennessee  penitentiary  is 
a  school  of  crime  instead  of  being  a  reformatory 


IN  THE  SO  UTHERN  STA  TES.  T  3  3 

institution.  .  .  .  There  are  now  about  fifty  boys 
in  the  penitentiary  under  eighteen  years  of  age. 
.  .  .  Nine-tenths  of  them  leave  prison  much 
worse  than  when  they  came.  .  .  .  They  are  thrown 
into  the  midst  of  hundreds  of  the  worst  criminals 
the  State  affords,  sleeping  in  the  same  cell  with 
them  at  night,  and  working  at  the  same  bench  or 
machine  in  the  day.  .  .  .  The  young  and  the 
old,  the  comparatively  good  and  the  vilest  and 
most  depraved,  are  thrown  promiscuously  to- 
gether." l 

Even  that  superficial  discipline  which  obtains 
in  the  prison,  addressed  merely  against  physical 
insubordination,  is  loose,  crude,  and  morally  bad. 
The  freedom  of  intercourse  among  the  convicts 
is  something  preposterous.  The  State  is  actually 
put  into  the  position  of  bringing  together  its 
murderers,  thieves,  house-breakers,  highwaymen, 
and  abandoned  women,  and  making  each  ac- 
quainted with  all  the  rest,  to  the  number  of  about 
five  hundred  a  year.  In  an  intelligently  con- 
ducted prison,  each  convict  carries  his  food  to  his 
cell  and  eats  it  there  alone ;  but  in  this  one  the 
warden  recommends  that  a  dining-room  be  fitted 
up  for  1 200  persons.  Convicts  are  given  duties 

1  The  roll  of  the  Mississippi  penitentiary  shows,  December,  1881, 
in  a  total  number  one-third  less,  seventy  boys  to  have  been 
received  into  the  prison  under  eighteen  years  of  age,  some  of 
them  being  but  twelve  and  thirteen,  sentenced  for  life  and  terms 
in  their  probabilities  equivalent  to  a  life  sentence. 


CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 

connected  with  the  prison  management;  they  are 
"door-keepers,"  and  "wing-tenders,"  and  "roll- 
callers."  In  one  year  the  number  of  escapes  from 
within  its  walls,  not  counting  those  made  during 
the  fire,  was  more  than  half  as  great  as  the  total 
of  escapes  for  an  equal  length  of  time  from  the 
State  prisons  of  all  New  England,  with  New 
York,  New  Jersey,  Pennsylvania,  Maryland,  Ohio, 
Indiana,  and  Illinois,  where  there  were  over 
12,000  convicts.  One  woman  escaped  twice,  and 
another  one  three  times,  both  within  the  same 
ninety  days. 

The  incapable  simplicity  of  the  prison's  disci- 
plinarians is  pointedly  shown  again  in  a  list  of  no 
less  than  101  convicts  recommended  for  execu- 
tive clemency,  some  for  having  helped  to  put  out 
the  fire  in  December,  1881,  some  for  holding 
mutineers  in  check  on  the  same  occasion,  and 
some  for  running  and  telling  on  certain  fellow- 
convicts  who  were  preparing  to  escape  in  dis- 
guise. Reformatory  discipline  can  hardly  be 
imagined  as  reaching  a  lower  degree  of  imbe- 
cility. 

The  chaplain's  report  is  a  bundle  of  crude 
generalities,  marked  by  a  serene  ignorance  of  the 
badness  of  affairs,  and  by  a  total  absence  of  any 
tabulated  or  other  form  of  accurate  or  useful  ob- 
servation. Some  spelling,  some  reading,  regular 
Sabbath  service,  Sunday-school, — all  is  recounted 
in  indefinite  quantities,  except  the  33  admissions 


IN  THE  SO  UTHERN  S TA  TES.  j  3  5 

into  the  "prison  church."  No  feature  is  lacking 
of  that  well-meant  but  melancholy  farce  which 
religious  prison  work  always  must  be  when  per- 
formed without  regard  to  the  unique  conditions 
of  life  to  which  it  is  addressed.  During  the  win- 
ter of  i88i-'82,  the  chaplain  preached  sometimes 
to  the  convicts  at  Ensley's  farm,  where  "  they 
seemed  to  enjoy  the  services  very  much";  and 
this  is  all  he  has  to  say  of  the  place  where  men 
were  being  "found  dead,"  and  "killed,"  and 

"drowned,"  and  " "-ed.     Nor  was  his  silence 

a  mistaken  discreetness ;  for  he  writes : 

"The  objects  sought  by  imprisoning  offenders  being  the  secu- 
rity of  society  and  the  punishment  and  reformation  of  the  guilty, 
I  am  glad  to  say  that  these  objects  are  certainly  in  a  large  meas- 
ure being  accomplished  in  many  cases  in  the  management  of  our 
State  Prison." 

Having  thus  claimed  a  proprietary  share  in  this 
rotten  institution,  he  wisely  concludes  with  an 
expression  of  timid  uncertainty  as  to  how  many 
of  his  "prison  church"  membership  will  finally 
reach  "  the  haven  of  eternal  repose." 

But  are  these  bad  conditions  necessarily  charge- 
able to  the  Lease  System  ?  No,  and  yes.  They 
have  been  dwelt  upon  to  show  with  what  a  state 
of  affairs  the  system  will  content  itself,  its  in- 
spectors, the  State  legislators,  and  the  community 
at  large.  It  has  nothing  in  it  to  produce  a 
knowledge  of  and  desire  for  a  correct  and  honor- 


THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYS  TEN 

able  and  truly  profitable  prison  management.  Its 
interests  make  directly  against  both  individual 
and  institutional  reform.  The  plea  of  self-support 
on  which  it  rests,  the  price  it  pays  for  its  privi- 
leges, whether  corruptly  intended  or  not,  are  a 
bribe  to  officials  and  to  public  alike  to  close  the 
ear  against  all  suggestions  of  better  things.  For 
example,  see  the  report  of  the  two  inspectors  of 
the  Tennessee  prisons.  Excepting  a  letter  from 
another  hand,  quoted  by  them,  their  whole  bien- 
nial report  is  less  than  one  hundred  lines.  A 
little  over  half  tells  of  the  fire  and  the  new  work- 
shops. A  little  less  than  half  is  given  to  the 
praise  of  the  Lease  System,  upon  the  lonely  merit 
of  cash  returns,  and  to  a  recommendation  for  its 
.continuance.  For  the  rest,  they  content  them- 
selves with  pointing  the  Legislature  to  the  reports 
of  the  superintendent,  warden,  physician,  and 
chaplain  of  the  penitentiary,  whom,  they  say,  "we 
indorse  most  heartily  as  attentive  to  their  re- 
spective duties,  and  alive  to  every  requirement 
of  the  law  [which  the  warden  reports  as  painfully 
barren  of  requirements]  and  the  dictates  of  hu- 
manity in  the  discharge  of  their  duty."  How- 
ever true  this  may  be  of  the  executive  officers,  it 
is  certainly  not  true  of  the  inspectors  themselves. 
They  do  not  certify  to  the  correctness  of  a  single 
roll  or  tabulated  statement,  or  imply  that  they 
have  examined  any  one  of  them.  They  do  not  pre- 
sent a  statistical  figure  of  their  own,  or  recom- 


IN  THE  SO  UTHERN  S TA  TES.  \  3  7 

mend  the  taking  of  a  single  record  among  all  the 
valuable  registries  that  should  be  made,  but  are 
not,  because  the  facts  they  would  indicate  are 
either  absent  or  despised.  Indeed,  their  silence 
is  in  a  certain  sense  obligatory;  for  the  omitted 
records,  if  taken,  would  condemn  the  system  they 
praise,  and  the  meager  records  that  are  given 
swarm  with  errors.  It  would  have  been  hard 
for  the  inspectors  to  say  anything  worse  for 
themselves  than  that  they  had  examined  the  re- 
ports. The  physician's  is  an  almost  unqualified 
denunciation  of  the  whole  establishment;  the 
superintendent's  is  three-quarters  of  a  page  of 
generalities  and  official  compliments ;  and  the 
warden's  tabulated  statements  confusedly  contra- 
dict each  other.  Even  the  numerical  counts  are 
incorrect.  One  convict,  distinctly  named  and 
described,  appears  in  the  list  of  escapes  but 
once,  and  among  the  recaptured  three  times. 
One,  reported  escaped  twice,  is  not  once  men- 
tioned among  the  recaptures.  Four  convicts 
(one  of  them  serving  a  nineteen  years'  sentence) 
reported  among  the  recaptures  are  not  on  the 
prison  roll,  nor  are  they  reported  as  pardoned, 
discharged,  transferred,  died,  blanked,  or  in  any 
other  way  disposed  of.  A  convict,  Zach.  Boyd 
by  name,  under  life  sentence,  expected  soon  to 
die  of  dropsy  and  recommended  by  the  warden 
for  executive  clemency,  is  enrolled  neither  among 
the  dead  nor  the  living.  The  inference  is  irre- 
18 


138 


THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 


sistible  that  the  prison's  officers  do  not  know  how 
many  convicts  they  have  or  should  have.  In  the 
list  of  "  Commutations,"  names  occur  repeatedly 
that  are  not  in  any  list  of  inmates  on  hand  or  re- 
moved or  released.  Several  convicts  are  reported 
as  white  men  when  they  escaped  and  as  colored 
when  recaptured,  and  one  or  two  pass  through 
two  such  transformations.  All  search  by  the 
present  writer  for  occasion  to  lay  these  errors 
upon  the  printer  has  proved  unavailing.  The 
fault  is  in  the  prisons  themselves  and  the  system 
on  which  they  are  managed.  Such  a  condition 
of  accounts  might  be  excused  in  the  rosters  of 
a  retreating  army;  but  it  is  not  to  be  believed, 
while  there  is  room  for  doubt,  that  the  people  of 
an  American  State  will  knowingly  accept  such 
stupid  and  wicked  trifling  with  their  State's  good 
name  and  the  safety  of  society,  or  even  such  a 
ghastly  burlesque  of  net  revenue. 

V.    IN   NORTH    CAROLINA. 

Yet  when  we  pass  across  the  boundaries  of 
Tennessee  and  enter  any  adjoining  State,  except- 
ing only  Missouri,  we  find  the  same  system  in 
operation,  operating  viciously,  and  often  more 
viciously  than  in  Tennessee.  North  Carolina, 
during  the  two  years  ending  October  31,  1880, 
held  in  custody  an  average  of  1090  convicts. 
The  penitentiary  proper  and  its  interior  industries 


IN  THE  SOUTHERN  STATES. 


139 


were  being  controlled  under  public  account. 
Shoemaking,  brickmaking,  tailoring,  blacksmith- 
ing,  etc.,  the  officers  report,  were  either  already 
profitable  or  could  be  made  so,  and  their  detailed 
accounts  of  receipts  and  expenditures  seem  to 
verify  their  assertions.  The  statistics  of  the 
prison  are  given,  not  minutely  or  very  compre- 
hensively, but  intelligently  as  far  as  they  go,  and 
are  valuable. 

So  much  sunshine  of  right  endeavor  an  un- 
usually restrained  Lease  System  lets  in :  the 
Lease  System  itself  exists  only  without  the  walls. 
Only  able-bodied  convicts  may  be  farmed  out. 
But  just  at  this  point  the  notion  bred  from  a  total 
misconception  of  the  true  profits  to  be  sought 
— the  notion  that  a  penal  establishment  must 
live  upon  its  income — begins  to  show  its  fruit. 
"  Every  enterprise  that  the  board  of  directors," 
says  its  president,  "have  been  able  to  devise  for 
using  the  labor  that  was  compelled  to  remain  in 
the  prison  has  been  either  summarily  crushed  in 
its  incipiency  or  seriously  crippled  in  its  progress 
by  the  fact  that  we  had  not  the  means  to  carry 
them  to  a  successful  issue.  Attempted  economy, 
we  believe,  has  proven  a  waste,  and  .  .  .  the 
State  has  suffered  by  a  niggardly  use  of  its  re- 
sources. The  [permanent]  buildings,  too,  have 
been  carried  too  far  to  be  now  torn  down,  and 
less  costly  ones  erected  in  their  stead.  They 
must,  therefore,  at  some  time,  be  completed ;  and 


140 


THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 


so  long  as  they  are  permitted  to  remain  in  their 
present  unfinished  condition,  they  are  subject  to 
damage,  from  exposure  to  the  weather,  that  will 
often  necessitate  work  to  be  redone  that  would 
have  been  saved  had  they  been  steadily  pressed 
to  completion.  There  would,  too,  be  incalculable 
economy  in  the  police  of  the  prison,  if  the  con- 
venient and  compact  building  in  progress  of 
erection  could  speedily  take  the  place  of  the 
scattered  and  imperfect  wooden  structures  now 
in  use ;  and  the  suffering  endured  by  the  convicts 
in  extreme  cold  weather,  which  is  no  part  of 
their  sentence,  but  has  been  unavoidable  under 
the  circumstances,  would  cease  to  be  a  source  of 
anxiety  to  the  board  of  directors  and  a  reflection 
upon  the  power  whose  duty  it  is  to  relieve  it." 

The  warden  reports  these  temporary  buildings 
as  devoid  of  all  means  for  warming  them,  badly 
ventilated,  and  entirely  unfitted  for  use.  A  part, 
at  least,  of  the  inmates  were,  it  seems,  congre- 
gated in  a  stockade,  which  was  "  liable  to  tumble 
at  any  time."  The  prison  physician  pronounced 
these  temporary  quarters  "the  fruitful  cause  of 
many  deaths."  The  population  within  this 
penitentiary  was  generally  about  three  hundred. 
About  eight  hundred,  therefore,  were  scattered 
about  in  companies  under  lessees,  and  in  the  two 
years  1 879-80  were  at  different  times  at  work 
on  six  different  railways  and  one  wagon  road. 
What  their  experiences  were  at  these  places  can 


IN  THE  SOUTHERN  STATES. 


141 


be  gathered,  by  one  at  a  distance,  only  from  one 
or  two  incidental  remarks  dropped  by  the  prison 
officers  in  their  reports  and  from  the  tabulated 
records  of  the  convict  movement.  There  is  no 
hospital  record  given  concerning  them,  nor  any 
physician's  account  of  their  sickness.  When 
they  drop  off  they  are  simply  scored  as  dead. 
The  warden  says  of  them  that  many  had  "  taken 
their  regular  shifts  for  several  years  in  the 
Swannanoa  and  other  tunnels  on  the  Western 
North  Carolina  Railroad,  and  were  finally  re- 
turned to  the  prison  with  shattered  constitutions 
and  their  physical  strength  entirely  gone,  so  that, 
with  the  most  skillful  medical  treatment  and  the 
best  nursing,  it  was  impossible  for  them  to  re- 
cuperate." 

But  such  remarks  convey  but  a  faint  idea  of 
the  dreadful  lot  of  these  unfortunate  creatures. 
The  prison  physician,  apologizing  for  the  high 
death-rate  within  the  walls,  instances  twenty-one 
deaths  of  men  "  who  had  been  returned  from  the 
railroads  completely  broken  down  and  hopelessly 
diseased."  And  when  these  deaths  are  left  out  of 
the  count,  the  number  of  deaths  inside  the  walls, 
not  attributable  to  outside  hardships,  amounted, 
in  1880,  to  just  the  number  of  those  in  the 
prisons  of  Auburn  and  Sing-Sing  in  a  population 
eight  times  as  large.  Ten-elevenths  of  the  deaths 
for  1879  and  1880  were  from  lingering  diseases, 
principally  consumption.  Yet,  year  in  and  year 


142 


THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 


out,  the  good  citizens  of  Raleigh  were  visiting 
the  place  weekly,  teaching  Sunday-school, 
preaching  the  gospel,  and  staring  these  facts  in 
the  face. 

Now,  what  was  the  death-rate  among  the  con- 
victs working  at  railroad  construction?  The 
average  number  of  prisoners  so  engaged  in  1 879 
and  1880  was  776.  The  deaths,  including  the  21 
sent  back  to  dine  in  prison,  were  178,  an  annual 
death-rate  of  nearly  eleven  and  a  half  per  cent., 
and  therefore  greater  than  the  year's  death-rate 
in  New  Orleans  in  1853,  the  year  of  the  Great 
Epidemic.  But  the  dark  fact  that  eclipses  every- 
thing else  is  that  not  a  word  is  given  to  account 
for  the  deaths  of  158  of  these  men,  except  that 
1 1  were  shot  down  in  trying  to  escape  from  this 
heartless  butchery. 

In  the  light  of  these  conditions,  the  ward- 
en's expressed  pleasure  in  the  gradual  decrease 
in  prison  population  since  1877  in  North  Caro- 
lina seems  rather  ill  grounded  and  not  likely  to 
last.  It  is  certainly  amazing  that  men  of  the 
sincerest  good  intentions  can  live  in  full  knowl- 
edge of  such  affairs,  or,  at  least,  within  easy  reach 
of  the  knowledge,  and  not  put  forth  their  protest 
against  the  system  that  fosters  and  perpetuates 
it.  The  North  Carolina  prison,  it  may  be  re- 
peated, is  managed,  within  its  walls,  on  the  public 
account ;  but  it  is  the  Public  Accounts  System 
suffocated  under  the  Lease  System  and  stabbed 


IN  THE  SO  UTHERN  STA  TES.  1 43 

by  the  glittering  policy  of  self-support.  In  1880 
alone  the  Lease  System,  pure  and  simple,  set  free 
upon  the  people  of  North  Carolina,  from  its  rail- 
road gangs,  123  escaped  criminals.  The  prison 
added  12  more.  The  recaptures  numbered  42. 
Ninety-three  remained  at  large ;  just  5  more  than 
the  total  escapes  for  an  equal  period  in  every 
State  prison  of  every  State  in  this  country,  ex- 
cepting the  other  eleven  managed  in  whole  or 
part  upon  the  Lease  System.  The  moral  effect 
of  such  a  prison  life  on  men  herded  in  stock- 
ades may  be  left  to  the  imagination ;  but  one 
other  fact  must  be  noted.  In  the  two  years 
1879-80  there  were  turned  into  this  penitentiary 
at  Raleigh  234  youths  under  twenty  years  of 
age,  not  one  of  whom  was  under  sentence  for  less 
than  twelve  months. 

It  only  remains  to  be  asked,  For  what 
enormous  money  consideration  did  the  State  set 
its  seal  upon  this  hideous  mistake?  The  state- 
ment would  be  incredible  were  it  attempted  to 
give  other  than  a  literal  quotation.  "  Therefore 
it  will  be  seen,"  says  the  warden  at  the  bottom 
of  his  resume  of  accounts,  "  that  the  convicts 
have  earned  $678.78  more  than  the  prison  de- 
partment has  cost  for  the  two  years  ending  Octo- 
ber 31,  1880." 


144  THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 


VI.    IN    KENTUCKY. 

In  Kentucky  the  management  of  the  State 
prison  seems  to  be  in  a  stage  of  transition.  Facts 
that  need  no  mention  here1  make  allusion  to  it  a 
particularly  delicate  task.  Yet  the  writer  may 
not  assume  that  any  one  would  desire  that  the 
truth  be  left  unsaid.  Upon  the  candor  and 
generosity  not  only  of  Kentuckians,  but  of  all 
the  communities  whose  prisons  come  under  this 
review,  must  the  writer  throw  himself,  trusting  to 
find  his  words  received  in  the  same  spirit  of 
simple  good  citizenship  in  which  they  are  offered. 

After  long  experience  with  the  Lease  System, 
there  was  passed  in  May,  1880,  an  "Act  to  pro- 
vide for  the  government,  management,  and  dis- 
cipline of  the  Kentucky  penitentiary,"  by  which 
the  prison  passed  back  from  other  hands  into 
those  of  the  -  State's  appointed  officers.  The 
Lease  System  was  not  discarded ;  but  certain 
very  decided  modifications  were  made  in  it,  lean- 
ing toward  the  Contract  System.  The  report 
made  by  the  prison  officers  and  board,  eighteen 
months  later,  bears  a  general  air  of  the  sad  con- 
fusion that  commonly  belongs  to  a  late  and 
partial  extrication  from  disaster.  It  affords  a 
retrospective  view  of  the  old  system  extremely 

1  At  Louisville,  Kentucky,  where  the  convention  before  which 
this  paper  was  read  was  then  enjoying  the  hospitality  of  the  State. 


IN  THE  SOUTHERN  STATES.  ^ 

unflattering ;  but  it  also  gives  evidence  that  cer- 
tain State  officers,  conspicuously  the  Governor, 
were  making  an  earnest  and  sagacious  effort  to 
reform  the  entire  penal  system  of  their  common- 
wealth. Yet  it  seems  plain  again  that  they  are 
not  a  little  handicapped  by  that  false  popular  idea 
of  the  prison's  place  in  the  State's  governmental 
economy,  upon  which  the  Lease  System  thrives 
while  the  convict  falls  into  moral  and  physical 
ruin  and  society's  real  interests  are  sold  for  old 
rags.  It  may  be  assumed  that  there  is  a  reserved 
determination  on  the  part  of  those  who  have 
taken  the  matter  in  hand,  to  raise  the  work  of 
reform  to  the  plane  it  should  occupy  as  soon  as 
the  general  sentiment  can  be  brought  to  require 
it ;  but,  meantime,  the  State's  penal  system  has 
risen,  from  something  worse,  only  to  the  level  of 
the  system  in  North  Carolina. 

The  officers  whom  the  State,  pursuant  to  its 
scheme  of  renovation,  placed  in  charge,  put  that 
scheme  into  practice,  to  use  their  own  words, 
"  whenever  the  costs  of  doing  so  involved  only 
a  small  outlay."  The  building  that  contains  the 
prisoners'  cells,  found  "  infested  with  all  kinds  of 
vermin  known  to  institutions  of  the  kind,"  with 
bad  ventilation  and  rat-eaten  floors  was  purged, 
by  convict  labor,  with  coal-oil,  fire,  whitewash, 
and  tar.  The  grounds  around  the  women's  quar- 
ters, "  low  and  marshy,  covered  with  water,  in 
rainy  weather,  ankle-deep  for  days,"  were  filled 
19 


146 


THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 


up.  "  Long  rows  of  shanties  or  sheds,  .  .  .  un- 
sightly and  inflammable  in  the  extreme,"  long 
used  in  the  hackling  of  hemp,  were  torn  away. 
The  hospital  and  chapel  were  cleaned  and  kept 
clean.  Religious  services  were  regularly  afforded 
by  an  official  chaplain  and  at  intervals  by  a 
Catholic  priest,  and  Sabbath  instruction  gradually 
took  shape  with  (let  it  be  said  to  their  praise) 
members  of  the  Governor's  own  family  in  charge. 
The  diminutive  and  dilapidated  library  was  put 
into  shape  and  new  books  were  added.  But 
from  here  on,  the  friends  of  the  prison  could  only 
pray  for  aid  and  relief.  The  principal  industry 
continued  to  be,  as  it  had  been  for  many  years, 
working  in  hemp,  under  circumstances  that  made 
it  a  distressing  and  unhealthful  hardship.  On 
the  1st  of  last  January,  350  men  were  working 
in  that  department  without  ventilation  or  bath, 
and,  says  the  warden,  "the  dust  so  dense  that 
it  is  frequently  impossible  to  recognize  a  man 
twenty  feet  distant."  "  It  is  certainly  an  act  only 
of  common  humanity  that  the  evil  created  should 
be  counteracted  by  good  and  ample  bathing 
facilities."  In  the  hospital,  as  a  fit  adjunct  to  the 
hemp  department,  there  were,  in  1881,  144  cases 
of  inflamed  eyes  and  202  of  acute  bronchitis. 
The  kitchen  was  not  adapted  to  the  proper  cook- 
ing of  the  prisoners'  food,  and  the  hospital's  re- 
sponse was  616  cases  of  acute  disease  of  the 
bowels  and  101  of  impoverishment  of  the  blood 


IN  THE  SOUTHERN  STATES. 

There  was  an  entire  absence  of  an  intelligent 
trained  reformatory  treatment,  in  accordance  with 
a  knowledge  of  criminal  character,  recognition  of 
the  criminal's  unforfeited  rights,  and  proper 
prison  discipline.  In  this  shape  stood  matters 
at  the  beginning  of  the  year  1882,  as  viewed  from 
without.  The  inside  history  can  only  be  con- 
jectured ;  but  we  get  one  glimpse  of  the  convict's 
sentiment  toward  his  choking,  blinding,  life- 
shortening  daily  task  in  the  fact  that,  within  the 
eighteen  months  of  the  new  regime,  five  men 
purposely  mutilated  their  hands  so  as  to  compel 
the  amputation  of  fingers,  and  two  others  cut  off, 
each,  a  hand  at  the  wrist.  What  the  fortunes  of 
the  convicts  leased  out  upon  railroad  construction 
were  and  are,  we  are  given  no  clew  by  which  to 
tell ;  the  report  contains  no  returns  from  them,  and 
we  have  only  the  same  general  assurance  that  all 
is  well  that  is  given  as  to  those  in  Tennessee  and 
North  Carolina. 


VII.    IN   SOUTH    CAROLINA. 

Another  view  of  the  Lease  System  under 
limitations  is  afforded  in  the  "Annual  Report 
of  the  Board  of  Directors  of  the  South  Car- 
olina Penitentiary  for  the  fiscal  year  ending 
October  31,  1881."  The  prison  is  not  only 
under  a  full  corps  of  State  officers,  but,  like 
the  North  Carolina  prison,  it  is  conducted 


THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 

on  public  account,  the  convicts  only  being  leased, 
and  of  these  only  such  as  are  sent  beyond  the 
prison's  walls.  Yet  the  overwhelming  consider- 
ation of  self-support  makes  the  spirit  of  the 
Lease  System  dominant  over  all.  The  reforma- 
tory features  are  crude,  feeble,  and  purely  acci- 
dental. The  records  are  meager.  The  discipline 
is  of  that  poor  sort  which  is  vaguely  reported  as 
"administered  only  when  necessary,"  addressed 
simply  to  the  prisoner's  safe  custody  and  the 
performance  of  his  tasks.  The  escapes,  from  an 
average  population  of  632,  were  36 ;  the  recap- 
tures, 21.  Most  likely,  to  the  popular  eye,  the 
numbers  are  not  startling ;  but,  if  we  look 
around  to  compare  them  with  the  record  of  some 
properly  ordered  prison  of  the  same  population, 
we  see  the  warden  of  the  Maryland  penitentiary, 
under  contract  management,  admitting  with  full 
explanation  and  apology  the  escape  of  one  pris- 
oner, the  first  in  ten  years.  The  number  of 
escapes  reported  from  the  South  Carolina  prison 
would  have  been  forty,  had  not  four  escaped  con- 
victs been  "  found  drowned  "  within  two  or  three 
days  after  their  escape.  A  report  with  which 
such  numbers  will  compare  favorably  can  be 
found  only  by  turning  to  other  leased  prison 
forces.  One  reason  why  it  may  there  be  found 
is  that,  in  South  Carolina,  almost  alone,  a  penalty 
attaches  to  the  lessees  for  each  escape.  "  There 
is  now  due  the  State,"  says  the  report,  "in  penal- 


IN  THE  SOUTHERN  STATES. 


149 


ties  for  the  escape  of  convicts  under  contract 
[meaning  leased  convicts]'  about  $25,000."  In 
the  chaplain's  report,  as  in  all  chaplains'  reports 
under  the  Lease  System,  and  probably  in  many 
under  better  systems,  is  seen  the  familiar  con- 
junction of  pious  intention  with  a  strange  over- 
sight of  the  inadaptability,  to  the  incarcerated 
criminal,  of  the  ordinary  technical  methods  of 
religion  in  society.  What  response  can  there  be 
but  a  weary  smile  to  the  complacent  announce- 
ment that  in  this  prison  "  there  are  now  about 
one  hundred  men  and  women  who  can  repeat 
the  Ten  Commandments,  the  Lord's  Prayer,  the 
Apostles'  Creed,  and  the  whole  of  Capers'  Cate- 
chism." But  the  humor  fades  out  when  it  is 
added,  "We  have  also  a  Sunday-school,  regularly 
conducted  by  intelligent  convicts."  "  I  regard  the 
State  Penitentiary,  as  designed  by  its  originators, 
as  a  great  reformatory  school,  and  I  am  happy 
to  believe,  from  personal  observation,  .  .  .  that 
this  prime  leading  object  is  ...  being  faithfully 
carried  out."  So  writes  this  evidently  sincere 
and  zealous  divine,  in  the  face  of  the  fact  that 
the  very  foundation  principles  of  reformatory 
treatment  were  absent,  and  that  constantly  a 
larger  number  of  convicts  were  kept  beyond  his 
reach  than  were  left  for  him  to  preach  to. 

One  of  the  peculiar  temptations  which  the 
Lease  System  holds  out  to  the  communities  em- 
ploying it,  as  such  communities  are  represented 


THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 

in  the  jury-box,  needs  a  moment's  careful  notice. 
The  States  where  this  system  is  in  vogue  are 
now,  and  have  been  for  some  years,  enjoying  a 
new  and  great  development  of  their  natural  re- 
sources and  of  other  industries  than  that  colossal 
agricultural  system  that  once  monopolized  their 
attention.  There  is,  therefore,  a  vigorous  demand 
for  the  opening  and  completion  of  extensive 
public  works, — mines,  railways,  turnpikes,  levees, 
and  the  like, — and  for  ways  and  means  for  getting 
them  done  as  quickly  and  cheaply  as  possible. 
Now,  it  is  with  these  potent  conditions  in  force 
that  the  Lease  System  presents  itself  as  the 
lowest  bidder,  and  holds  forth  the  seductive 
spectacle  of  these  great  works,  which  everybody 
wants  and  no  one  wants  to  pay  for,  growing 
apace  by  convict  labor  that  seems  to  cost  nothing. 
What  is  the  consequence?  We  might  almost 
assert  beforehand  that  the  popular  sentiment  and 
verdict  would  hustle  the  misbehaving,  with 
shocking  alacrity,  into  the  State's  prison  under  ex- 
travagant sentences  or  for  trivial  offenses,  and  sell 
their  labor  to  the  highest  bidder  who  will  use  them 
in  the  construction  of  public  works.  The  tempta- 
tion gathers  additional  force  through  the  popular 
ignorance  of  the  condition  and  results  of  these 
penitentiaries,  and  the  natural  assumption  that  they 
are  not  so  grossly  mismanaged  but  that  the  convict 
will  survive  his  sentence,  and  the  fierce  discipline 
of  the  convict  camp  "  teach  him  to  behave  himself." 


IN  THE  SOUTHERN  STA  TES.  1 5  j 

But  there  is  no  need  to  reason  from  cause  to 
effect  only.  The  testimony  of  the  prisons  them- 
selves is  before  us,  either  to  upset  or  else  to 
establish  these  conjectures.  A  single  glance  at 
almost  any  of  their  reports  startles  the  eye  with 
the  undue  length  of  sentences  and  the  infliction 
of  penalties  for  mere  misdemeanors  that  are 
proper  only  to  crimes  and  felonies.  In  the 
Georgia  penitentiary,  in  1880,  in  a  total  of  nearly 
1 200  convicts,  only  22  prisoners  were  serving  as 
low  a  term  as  one  year,  only  52  others  as  low  a 
term  as  two  years,  only  76  others  as  low  a  term 
as  three  years  ;  while  those  who  were  under  sen- 
tences of  ten  years  and  over  numbered  538, 
although  ten  years,  as  the  rolls  show,  is  the 
utmost  length  of  time  that  a  convict  can  be 
expected  to  remain  alive  in  a  Georgia  peniten- 
tiary. Six  men  were  under  sentence  for  simple 
assault  and  battery, — mere  fisticuffing, — one  of 
two  years,  two  of  five  years,  one  of  six  years, 
one  of  seven,  and  one  of  eight.  For  larceny, 
three  men  were  serving  under  sentence  of  twenty 
years ;  five  were  sentenced  each  fifteen  years ; 
one,  fourteen  years ;  six,  twelve  years  ;  thirty- 
five,  ten  years ;  and  one  hundred  and  seventy- 
two,  from  one  year  up  to  nine  years.  In  other 
words,  a  large  majority  of  all  these  had,  for 
simple  stealing,  without  breaking  in  or  violence, 
been  virtually  condemned  to  be  worked  and  mis- 
used to  death.  One  man  was  under  a  twenty 


.I52  THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 

years'  sentence  for  "  hog-stealing."  Twelve  men 
were  sentenced  to  the  South  Carolina  peniten- 
tiary, in  1 88 1,  on  no  other  finding  but  a  misde- 
meanor commonly  atoned  for  by  a  fine  of  a  few 
dollars,  and  which  thousands  of  the  State's 
inhabitants  are  constantly  committing  with  im- 
punity— the  carrying  of  concealed  weapons. 
Fifteen  others  were  sentenced  for  mere  assault 
and  assault  and  battery.  It  is  to  be  inferred — 
for  we  are  left  to  our  inferences — that  such  sen- 
tences were  very  short ;  but  it  is  inferable,  too, 
that  they  worked  the  customary  loss  of  citizen- 
ship for  life.  In  Louisiana,  a  few  days  before 
the  writing  of  this  paper,  a  man  was  sentenced 
to  the  penitentiary  for  twelve  months  for  stealing 
five  dollars'  worth  of  gunny-sacks. 

VIII.    IN   GEORGIA. 

The  convict  force  of  Georgia,  already  more 
than  once  alluded  to,  presents  the  Lease  System 
under  some  other  peculiarly  vicious  aspects.  For 
example,  the  State  is  bound  by,  and  is  now  in 
the  fourth  year  of,  a  twenty  years'  lease.  The 
convicts,  on  October  20,  1880,  were  1185  or 
1 1 86  in  number  (the  various  exhibits  of  the 
biennial  report  differ  widely  in  some  of  their 
statements).  They  were  consigned  to  three  peni- 
tentiaries in  three  different  counties,  each  of 
which  had  "  several  branch  camps."  Thus  they 


IN  THE  SOUTHERN  STATES. 


153 


were  scattered  about  in  eleven  camps  over  at 
least  seven  counties.  The  assurance  of  the 
"principal  keeper"  is  that  in  all  these  camps  they 
are  humanely  treated.  Every  "  permanent  camp  " 
has  a  hospital,  a  physician,  and  a  chaplain.  But 
there  are  other  camps  that  have  none.  Reports 
from  other  officials  and  from  special  committees 
of  citizens  repeat  the  principal  keeper's  assur- 
ance in  the  same  general  terms.  And  yet  all 
these  utterances  unconsciously  admit  facts  that 
betray  the  total  unfitness  of  the  management  for 
the  ends  it  ought  to  have  in  view  and  its  gross 
inhumanity.  From  the  "  General  Notice  to 
Lessees  "  the  following  is  taken,  with  no  liberties 
except  to  italicize : 

"  In  all  cases  of  severe  illness  the  shackles  must 
be  promptly  removed."  "  The  convicts  shall  be 
turned  off  of  the  chain  on  the  Sabbath  and 
allowed  to  recreate  in  and  about  the  stockade." 
Elsewhere  the  principal  keeper  says,  "  When  a 
convict  is  sick,  the  chains  are  to  be  taken  off  of 
him."  As  to  the  discipline,  he  reports  35  escapes 
(7  burglars,  3  house-burners,  9  murderers  and 
would-be  murderers,  I  forger,  3  robbers,  7  thieves, 
and  others  whose  crimes  are  best  unmentioned), 
with  no  recaptures  ;  and  the  surgeon  reports  nine 
men  killed,  three  of  them  by  fellow  convicts. 
"  You  will  observe  the  death-rate  to  have  greatly 
decreased  in  the  last  two  years,"  says  the  prin- 
cipal keeper ;  but  the  death-rate,  when  observed, 


THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 

was  found  to  have  decreased  only  to  about  twice 
the  rate  of  properly  planned  and  managed  estab- 
lishments of  the  kind.  This,  he  reports,  is  one- 
half  what  it  had  been.  His  tabulated  statements 
relating  to  the  convicts,  though  lamentably  scanty, 
reveal  an  amount  of  confusion  behind  them  that 
is  hard  to  credit.  One  table,  purporting  to  show 
the  whole  1 186  convicts  in  confinement,  classified 
by  the  crimes  under  which  they  were  sentenced, 
has  not  a  single  correct  number  in  it,  and  is  an 
entire  hundred  short  in  its  true  total.  The  num- 
bers, moreover,  are  so  far  out  of  the  way  that 
they  cannot  possibly  be  the  true  exhibit  of  some 
other  date  substituted  in  error.  They  report  1 84 
under  sentence  for  burglary,  whereas  the  roll 
shows  467,  and  they  entirely  omit  25  serving 
sentence  for  forgery,  and  23  for  robbery. 

IX.   THE   PARDONING   POWER. 

We  have  already  noticed,  in  the  prison  and 
convict  camps  of  this  State,  the  feature  of  cruel 
sentences.  Let  us  look  at  another;  to  wit,  lavish 
pardons.  It  is  but  typical  of  the  prisons  under 
the  Lease  System,  wherever  that  is  found  in 
unrestrained  operation.  Here  may  be  seen  a 
group  of  penal  institutions,  the  worst  in  the 
country  by  every  evidence  of  their  own  setting 
forth  :  cruel,  brutalizing,  deadly  ;  chaining,  flog- 
ging, shooting,  drowning,  killing  by  exhaustion 


IN  THE  SOUTHERN  STATES. 


155 


and  exposure,  holding  the  criminal  out  to  the 
public  gaze,  publishing  him  to  the  world  by 
name  and  description  in  its  reports  when  he  goes 
in,  every  alternate  year  while  he  stays  in,  and 
when  he  dies  or  goes  out ;  putting  under  foot 
every  method  of  reform  worthy  of  prison  science, 
mocking  such  intelligent  sense  of  justice  and 
mercy  as  he  may  have,  and  doing  everything  that 
can  be  done  to  make  his  heart  and  conscience 
harder  than  the  granite  of  his  prison  walls.  Yet 
these  prisons  are  sending  forth  from  their  gates  a 
larger  percentage  of  their  populations,  pardoned, 
than  issues  in  like  manner  from  all  the  prisons 
of  the  country  managed  on  intelligent  reforma- 
tory systems.  Nor  can  the  fault  be  confidently 
imputed,  as  is  often  hastily  done,  to  political 
design  or  mere  pliability  in  State  governors. 
The  horrors  of  the  convict  camps,  best  known  to 
the  executive,  the  absence  of  a  discipline  calcu- 
lated to  show  who  is  worthy  of  clemency,  the 
activity  of  outside  friends  usurping  this  delicate 
office,  are  potent  causes ;  and  the  best  extenua- 
tion that  can  be  offered  is  that  a  large  proportion 
of  these  pardons  are  granted  not  because  the 
prisoner  has  become  so  good,  but  because  the 
prison  is  so  bad. 


I  c;  6  THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 


X.    IN   TEXAS. 

This  is  conspicuously  the  case  in  Texas.  In 
the  two  years  ending  October  31,  1880,  the  Gov- 
ernor pardoned  one  hundred  State  convicts  from 
the  Huntsville  (Texas)  penitentiary.  Over  one- 
fourth  were  children  from  ten  to  sixteen  years  of 
age,  and  nearly  another  fourth,  says  the  superin- 
tendent, "  were  hopelessly  diseased,  blind,  crip- 
pled, or  demented,  .  .  .  simple  objects  of  pity, 
the  sight  of  whom  would  have  excited  commis- 
eration in  hearts  of  stone." 

For  some  years  past  Texas  has  had  in  custody 
about  two  thousand  convicts  at  once.  They  are 
under  the  Lease  System,  some  of  whose  features, 
at  least,  give  dissatisfaction  to  the  State's  prison 
directors  and  to  its  Legislature.  The  working 
of  convicts  remote  from  the  prison,  though  prac- 
ticed, is  condemned,  and  the  effort  is  being  made 
to  bring  the  management  into  conformity  with  a 
statute  that  requires  as  many  of  the  convicts  as 
can  be  to  be  employed  within  the  penitentiary 
walls.  Two  different  reports  of  the  directors, 
covering  a  period  of  four  years,  impress  their 
reader  as  the  utterances  of  men  of  the  best  dis- 
position, sincerely  desiring  to  promote  humanity 
and  the  public  good,  but  handicapped,  if  not 
themselves  in  some  degree  misled,  by  the  error 


IN  THE  SO  UTHERN  STA  TES.  j  5  j 

of  making  self-support  the  foremost  considera- 
tion in  all  their  estimates  of  prison  methods. 
"  To  provide  for  their  employment,  so  that  they 
will  cease  to  be  a  burden  upon  the  taxpayers  of 
the  country"  would  be  counted  a  strange  propo- 
sition to  apply  to  courts,  schools,  or  police,  yet  is 
assumed  by  them,  as  a  matter  of  course,  to  be 
applicable  to  prison  populations,  and  so  becomes 
the  barrier  from  which  they  recoil,  and  which 
they  have  allowed  to  throw  them  back  into  the 
mire  of  the  lease  system.  "  This  problem,"  they 
say,  "  has  long  engaged  the  attention  of  philan- 
thropists and  statesmen."  But  they  mistake. 
The  real  problem  that  has  engaged  such  is,  How 
to  procure  the  most  honorable  and  valuable  re- 
sults, and  to  pay  for  them  whatever  is  necessary 
and  no  more.  It  was,  unfortunately,  under  the 
shadow  of  these  mistakes  that  the  Texas  board 
went  so  far  as  to  "  consider  very  seriously  as  to 
whether  it  should  not  adopt  the  Public  Accounts 
or  the  Contract  System,"  only  to  reject  the  one 
and  to  fail  to  get  bids  on  the  other.  As  a  result 
the  State  stands  to-day  bound,  for  fourteen  years 
to  come,  by  the  Lease  System,  the  worst  prison 
system  in  Christendom,  a  system  that  cannot  be 
reconciled  with  the  public  honor,  dignity  or  wel- 
fare. The  board  intimates  plainly  that  this  Lease 
System  is  not  its  choice,  or  at  least  would  not  be 
but  for  the  nightmare  of  self-support.  As  it  is, 
they  strive  to  make  the  best  of  a  bad  matter. 


158  THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 

How  bad  it  has  'been  and   is,  a  few  facts  will 
show.1 

It  is  said  of  the  Huntsville  penitentiary,  Texas 
(an  additional  one  has  just  been  built  at  Rusk), 
that  it  was  built  "  on  the  old  plan,  looking  alto- 
gether to  security,  and  without  any  regard  to 
proper  ventilation  or  the  health  or  comfort  of  the 
inmates,  .  .  .  the  cell  buildings  ...  to  a  consider- 
able extent  cut  off  from  light  and  air,  and  in 
constant  danger  of  destruction  from  fire."  The 
prison  board  erected  a  new  cell  building  to  take 
its  place,  in  which  each  cell  has  a  cubic  content 
of  384  feet,  and,  says  the  board,  "can  comfortably 
accommodate  two  men."  This  gives  each  occu- 
pant an  air  space  one-quarter  of  the  minimum 
necessary  to  health.  Yet  this  was  a  great  im- 
provement. It  may  be  mentioned  in  passing, 
as  an  incident  very  common  under  the  Lease 
System,  that  about  the  same  time  a  lot  of  ma- 
chinery, the  property  of  the  State,  valued  on  the 
inventory  of  one  lessee  after  another  at  $i  1,600, 
was  sold  for  $68 1,  and  the  proceeds  laid  out  in 
fifty-one  breech -loading,  double-barreled  shot- 
guns. The  following  is  from  the  superintendent's 
biennial  report  of  October  31,  1880:  "The  most 
usual  mode  of  punishment  practiced  at  outside 
camps  is  by  stocks.  .  .  .  Most  of  the  sergeants, 

1  The  Legislature  has  rejected  and  annulled  this  lease,  but 
under  a  public  accounts  system  has  retained  the  most  odious 
features  of  the  Convict  Lease  System. 


IN  THE  SO  UTHERN  S TA  TES.  \  5  g 

in  order  to  make  it  effective,  have  lifted  the  con- 
victs on  the  ball  of  the  foot,  or  tiptoe,  .  .  . 
jeopardizing  not  only  health  but  life.  The  [pres- 
ent] lessees  .  .  .  abolished  the  use  of  stocks  at 
their  wood  camps,  and  I  rejoice  that  you  [the 
directors]  have  determined  to  abolish  them  alto- 
gether. On  many  of  the  farms  sergeants  have 
been  in  the  habit  of  ...  whipping,  as  well  as 
permitting  their  guards  to  do  so,  without  first 
obtaining  an  order  from  the  board  of  directors, 
as  required  by  law."  Of  illegal  punishments  he 
says :  "  We  have  been  compelled  to  discharge 
sergeants  and  a  great  number  of  guards  on 
account  of  it.  ...  I  am  satisfied  that  many 
escapes  have  been  caused  by  illegal  punishments 
and  by  cursing  and  threats."  The  spirit  of  this 
officer's  report  does  him  honor  throughout. 

One  can  turn  again  only  to  leased  prisons  else- 
where, to  find  numbers  with  which  to  compare 
the  ghastly  mortality  of  some  of  these  Texas 
convict  camps.  Men  in  large  numbers,  "who 
have  contracted  in  the  miserable  jails  of  the 
State  incurable  diseases,  or  whose  systems  have 
been  impregnated  with  diseases  from  having  led 
lives  of  debauchery  and  dissipation,  are  put  to 
the  hardest  manual  labor  and  .  .  .  soon  break 
down  in  health."  "  Sick  convicts  are  crowded 
into  the  same  building  containing  well  convicts, 
and  cannot  have  proper  nursing  and  quiet,  even  if 
they  have  good  medical  attention."  "  Frequently 


l6o  THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 

sergeants,  believing  that  convicts  are  trying  to 
play  off,  have  kept  them  at  work  when,  in  fact, 
they  were  seriously  ill,  ...  or  have  tried  to 
physic  them  themselves."  On  railroad  con- 
struction the  average  annual  rate  of  mortality, 
for  1879  and  1880,  was  47  to  the  thousand,  three 
times  the  usual  death-rate  of  properly  managed 
American  prisons ;  at  plantation  labor  it  was  49  ; 
at  the  iron-works  it  was  54;  and  at  the  wood- 
cutting camps  more  than  half  the  entire  average 
population  died  within  the  two  years.  So  much 
as  to  the  rate.  The  total  number  of  deaths  in  the 
period  was  256,  of  which  only  60  occurred  in 
the  prison  hospital,  the  rest  in  the  camps.  Nor 
was  any  considerable  fraction  of  them  by  con- 
tagious diseases.  They  were  from  congestions 
of  the  brain,  the  stomach,  and  the  bowels  ;  from 
scurvy,  dropsy,  nervous  fever,  malaria,  chronic 
diarrhoea,  general  debility,  pneumonia.  Thirty- 
five  died  of  gun-shot  wounds,  five  of  "  ^vounds 
miscellaneous''  Of  three,  the  cause  of  death  was 
"not  stated."  Three  were  drowned,  four  were 
sunstruck,  two  committed  suicide,  and  two  were 
killed  by  the  explosion  of  a  boiler.  And  all 
was  reported  without  a  word  of  apology  or 
explanation.  The  whole  thirty-five  who  were 
shot  to  death  were  shot  in  attempting  to  escape 
"  from  forces  at  work  outside  the  prison  walls." 
"  In  nearly  all  these  cases  the  verdict  of  a  coro- 
ner's jury  has  stated  that  the  guard  acted  in  dis- 


IN  THE  SO UTHERN  STATES.  i ft i 

charge  of  his  duty."  As  to  the  remainder,  we 
know  not  what  the  verdicts  were  or  whether 
there  were  any ;  nor  do  we  know  how  many  vain 
attempts  were  made  to  escape;  but  we  know 
that,  over  and  above  the  deaths,  there  were 
treated  in  the  prison  hospital — where  so  few  of 
the  outside  sick  ever  arrived — fifteen  others  with 
gunshot  wounds  and  fifty-two  with  "  wounds  mis- 
cellaneous." 

We  know,  too,  by  the  record,  that  four  men 
did  escape  from  within  the  prison  walls,  and  three 
hundred  and  sixty-two  from  the  gangs  outside. 
In  the  interest  of  the  Texas  taxpayer,  from 
whom  the  Lease  System  is  supposed  to  lift  an 
intolerable  burden,  as  well  as  for  society  at  large, 
it  would  be  well  to  know  what  were  the  favorite 
crimes  of  these  three  hundred  and  sixty-six 
escaped  felons  (since  unreformed  criminals  gen- 
erally repeat  the  same  crimes  again  and  again), 
what  moral  and  material  mischief  one  hundred 
and  twenty-three  of  them  did  before  they  were 
recaptured,  and  what  the  record  will  be  of  the 
two  hundred  and  forty-three  remaining  at  large 
when  the  terms  they  should  have  served  have 
expired.  These  facts  are  not  given ;  we  get 
only,  as  it  were,  a  faint  whiff  of  the  mischief  in 
the  item  of  $6900  expended  in  apprehending  one 
hundred  of  them. 

And  yet  this  is  the  operation  of  the  Lease 
System  under  a  Governor  who  was  giving  the 

21 


THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 

State  prison  and  its  inmates  a  far  more  rational, 
humane,  and  diligent  attention  than  is  generally 
accorded  them  by  State  executives,  albeit  such 
officers  are  not  as  negligent  in  this  direction  as 
they  are  generally  supposed  to  be ;  under  a  war- 
den, too,  who,  if  we  read  rightly  between  the  lines 
of  his  report,  is  a  faithful  and  wise  overseer ;  and 
even  under  lessees  whom  this  warden  commends 
as  "  kind  and  humane  gentlemen."  We  have  both 
the  warden's  and  the  directors'  word  for  it,  that 
this  disciplinary  and  sanitary  treatment  of  the 
convicts  was  u  a  very  decided  improvement  "  on 
what  it  had  been.  The  question  remains,  What 
may  the  system  do  where  it  is  a  State's  misfor- 
tune to  have  a  preoccupied  Governor  and  unscru- 
pulous prison  lessees?  It  is  a  positive  comfort 
to  know  that  for  two  years  more,  at  least,  the 
same  officials  and  lessees  remained  in  charge, 
that  a  second  prison  was  added  to  the  old  one 
and  a  third  projected,  and  that  the  total  mortality 
was  reduced  by  the  abolition  of  the  wood-cutting 
camps. 

But  it  is  far  otherwise  to  know  by  the  report 
for  1881-82  that  the  death-rate  is  still  enormous, 
and  has  increased  in  the  prison  arid  in  most  of 
the  camps;  that  the  number  of  men  committed 
to  hospital  with  gunshot  and  "  miscellaneous " 
wounds  was  fifty-two  ;  that  in  the  mortality  lists 
are  three  suicides,  six  sun-strokes,  and  thirty-six 
victims  of  the  breech-loading  double-barreled 


IN  THE  SOUTHERN  STATES. 

shot-guns;  that  there  passed  through  hospital 
fifty-one  cases  of  scurvy ;  and  that  there  were 
three  hundred  and  ninety-seven  escapes  and  but 
seventy-four  recaptures. 

It  may  be  enough  attention  has  already  been 
given  to  chaplains'  reports  in  these  so-called  peni- 
tentiaries, but  the  one  for  the  Texas  prison  com- 
pels at  least  a  glance.  It  makes  sixteen  lines  of 
letter-press.  White  men's  prayer-meeting  on 
Sunday  at  one  hour,  colored  men's  at  another, 
general  Sunday-school  at  another,  preaching  at 
another.  These  services  are  believed  to  have 
been  fruitful  of  good ;  it  is  hoped  "  that  some 
will  leave  the  prison  reformed  men  "  ;  but  there 
is  not  the  record  of  one  positive  result,  or  a  single 
observation  registered  looking  to  the  discovery 
of  a  result,  either  intellectual,  moral,  or  religious, 
concerning  hundreds  of  men  whose  even  partial 
reformation  would  be  worth  to  the  State — if  it 
must  be  reduced  to  money  value — tens  of  thou- 
sands of  dollars.  Two  lines  of  the  report  are 
certainly  unique  :  "  We  endeavor  to  enlist  all  the 
men  in  this  service  [the  Sunday-school]  we  can, 
and  try  to  suppress  all  differences  of  opinion 
which  are  calculated  to  engender  strife." 

A  single  ten  thousand  dollars  is  the  State's 
annual  share  in  what  are  called  the  profits  of  this 
system  of  convict  control.  Were  the  convicts 
managed  under  the  Public  Accounts  System  at 
an  annual  loss  of  a  like  amount  (which  need  not 


164 


THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 


be),  making  a  difference  of  twenty  thousand  dol- 
lars, and  were  the  burden  lifted  from  the  mass  of 
the  one  million  six  hundred  thousand  inhabitants 
of  Texas  and  thrown  entirely  upon  the  shoulders 
of  one  hundred  thousand  tax-payers,  it  would  be 
just  one  dime  a  year  to  each  shoulder.  But  it 
would  save  the  depredations  of  nearly  two  hun- 
dred escaped  convicts  per  year,  whatever  they 
might  be ;  such  reprisals  as  about  four  hundred 
others,  annually  liberated  and  turned  loose  upon 
society,  may  undertake  as  an  offset  for  the  foul 
treatment  they  have  undergone  in  the  name  of 
justice,  and  the  attendant  increase  in  the  expenses 
of  police;  and  the  expenses  of  new  trials  and 
convictions  for  the  same  old  crimes  committed 
over  again  by  many  who  might  have  in  whole  or 
in  some  degree  reformed,  but  instead  were  only 
made  worse.  And  two  things  more  it  would 
save — the  honor  of  the  State  and  the  integrity  of 
the  laws  and  of  the  courts.  For  one  thing,  how- 
ever, the  people  of  Texas  are  to  be  congratulated : 
that  they  have  public  servants  ready — let'  the 
people  but  give  the  word — to  abjure  the  Lease 
System  with  all  its  horrid  shams  and  humiliating 
outrages,  and  establish  in  its  place  a  system  of 
management  that  shall  be  first  honorable  and 
morally  profitable,  and  then  as  inexpensive  as 
may  be. 


IN  THE  SOUTHERN  STATES. 


XI.    IN    ALABAMA. 

Something  like  the  same  feeling  was  displayed 
by  the  Governor  and  some  others  in  the  State  of 
Alabama  in  1882.  In  the  matter  of  its  peniten- 
tiary and  convict  camps,  it  is  not  necessary  to 
weary  the  eye  again  with  figures.  Between  the 
dates  of  the  last  two  biennial  reports  (1880  and 
1882)  a  change  of  administration  took  place  in 
the  prison  management,  affording,  by  a  compari- 
son of  the  two  reports,  a  revelation  that  should 
have  resulted  in  the  instant  abolition  of  the  Lease 
plan  at  any  cost.  Under  date  of  October,  1880, 
the  penitentiary  inspectors  reported  to  the  Gov- 
ernor that  the  contractors  (lessees)  had  "  provided 
strong  prisons  for  the  safe-keeping  and  comfort 
of  the  convicts  " ;  that  these  prisons  had  "  generally 
been  neatly  kept,"  and  that  they  themselves  had 
"  required  much  attention  to  be  given  to  the 
sanitary  regulations  of  them."  They  admitted 
the  fact  of  considerable  sickness  at  one  or  two 
places,  but  stated  that  two  of  the  inspectors  had 
visited  the  convicts  employed  there  and  "  found 
the  sick  in  a  comfortable  hospital,  with  medi- 
cal attendance,  nurses,  and  everything  needed  for 
their  comfort."  They  reported  their  diligent 
attention  to  all  their  official  duties,  and  stated, 
as  from  their  own  knowledge,  that  during  the  two 
years  then  closing  the  convicts  had  "  generally 


THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 

been  well  clothed  and  fed,  and  kindly  and 
humanely  treated ;  and  that  corporal  punishment 
had  only  been  inflicted  in  extreme  cases."  They 
closed  with  the  following  remarkable  statement : 
"  Notwithstanding  our  report  shows  a  decrease 
of  one  hundred  and  fourteen  convicts,  .  .  .  yet 
we  think  .  .  .  the  future  of  this  institution  is 
brighter  than  its  past."  There  had  been  paid 
into  the  State  treasury  forty-eight  thousand  dollars, 
and  the  managers  in  general  were  elated.  But  a 
change  in  the  prison's  administration  added  a  diff- 
erent chapter,  and  in  1882  a  new  warden  wrote : 

"  I  found  the  convicts  confined  at  fourteen  different  prisons 
controlled  by  as  many  persons  or  companies,  and  situated  at  as 
many  different  places.  .  .  .  They  [the  prisons]  were  as  filthy,  as 
a  rule,  as  dirt  could  make  them,  and  both  prisons  and  prisoners 
were  infested  with  vermin.  .  .  .  Convicts  were  excessively  and, 
in  some  instances,  cruelly  punished.  .  .  .  They  were  poorly 
clothed  and  fed.  .  .  .  The  sick  were  neglected,  insomuch  that 
no  hospital  had  been  provided,  they  being  confined  in  the  cells 
with  the  well  convicts.  .  .  .  The  prisons  have  no  adequate  water 
supply,  and  I  verily  believe  there  were  men  in  them  who  had 
not  washed  their  faces  in  twelve  months.  ...  I  found  the  men 
so  much  intimidated  that  it  was  next  to  impossible  to  get  from 
them  anything  touching  their  treatment.  .  .  .  Our  system  is  a 
better  training  school  for  criminals  than  any  of  the  dens  of 
iniquity  that  exist  in  our  large  cities.  ...  To  say  there  are  any 
reformatory  measures  used  at  our  prisons,  or  that  any  regard  is 
had  to  kindred  subjects,  is  to  state  a  falsehood.  The  system  is  a 
disgrace  to  the  State,  a  reproach  to  the  civilization  and  Christian 
sentiment  of  the  age,  and  ought  to  be  speedily  abandoned." 

Almost  the  only  gleams  of  light  in  these  dark 


IN  THE  SOUTHERN  STATES.  ify 

pictures  are  these  condemnations  of  the  system  by 
those  whose  official  duties  require  them  to  accom- 
modate themselves  to  it,  but  whose  humanity, 
whose  reason,  and  whose  perception  of  the  pub- 
lic's true  interest  compel  them  to  denounce  it. 
This  is  again  pointedly  the  case. 


XII.    IN   VIRGINIA. 

There  the  State  prison  has  been  for  a  long  time 
managed  on  Public  Accounts ;  but  the  manage- 
ment was  only  a  mismanagement  and  a  neglect ; 
and  when  this  came  to  be  known,  those  in  author- 
ity, instead  of  trying  to  correct  the  needless  abuse 
of  a  good  system,  rejected  the  system  itself  and 
adopted  the  contract  system.  The  report  of  the 
prison  board  for  the  year  ending  September  30, 
1 88 1,  indicates  that  the  change  was  made  mainly, 
and  probably  only,  on  pecuniary  considerations, 
and  there  seems  to  be  reason  to  fear  that  this  nar- 
row view  is  carrying  sentiment  downward  toward 
the  Lease  System  itself.  The  board  reports  itself 
"  pleased  to  discover,  for  the  first  time,  that  the 
general  agent  has  reached  the  conclusion  that 
the  '  best  way  to  make  it  [the  prison]  self-sustain- 
ing would  be  to  lease  the  convict  labor.' "  At 
the  date  of  this  report  the  mischievous  doctrine 
had  already  made  its  way  through  the  Legisla- 
ture and  into  the  convict  management ;  and  the 
prison  becoming  over-crowded,  a  large  company 


THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 

of  prisoners  were  leased  to  certain  railroad  com- 
panies, beyond  the  control  of  the  penitentiary 
superintendent.  A  glance  at  the  surgeon's  report 
shows  one  of  the  results  of  this  movement.  In 
the  population  within  the  prison,  averaging  about 
600,  the  death-rate  was  I  y2  per  cent. ;  while 
among  the  260  convicts  on  the  Richmond  and 
Alleghany  Railroad  it  was  nearly  8^  per  cent., 
even  after  leaving  out  of  count  certain  accidental 
deaths  that  legitimately  belong  to  the  perils  of 
the  work  and  really  should  be  included  in  the 
count.  Including  them,  the  rate  would  be  1 1  per 
cent.  The  superintendent  does  not  withhold  his 
condemnation  :  "  The  system  of  leasing,"  he  says, 
"  as  is  clearly  shown  by  the  statistics  of  the  few 
governments,  State  and  foreign,  where  it  prevails, 
is  barbarous  in  the  extreme,  and  should  be  dis- 
countenanced. The  dictates  of  humanity,  if  no 
other  consideration  prevailed,  should  be  sufficient 
to  silence  any  effort  to  establish  this  system  of 
prison  management  in  Virginia." 

XIII.    IN   ARKANSAS,    MISSISSIPPI,   AND   LOUISIANA — 
THE   SYSTEM    AT    ITS   WORST. 

Even  where  the  system  enjoys  the  greatest 
favor  from  the  State  governments  whose  responsi- 
bilities in  the  matter  it  pretends  to  assume,  it  is 
rare  that  there  is  not  some  one  who  revolts  and 
utters  against  it  his  all  too  little  heeded  denunci- 


IN  THE  SOUTHERN  STATES.  ^9 

ation.  Such  voices  are  not  altogether  unheard 
even  in  Arkansas,  Mississippi,  and  Louisiana, 
where  undoubtedly  the  lessees  are  more  slackly 
held  to  account,  as  they  more  completely  usurp 
the  State's  relation  to  its  convicts  than  elsewhere. 
It  is  here  may  be  found  a  wheel  within  this 
wheel ;  to  wit,  the  practice  of  sub-leasing.  So 
complete  in  these  regions  is  the  abandonment,  by 
the  State,  of  all  the  duties  it  owes  to  its  criminal 
system,  that  in  two  instances,  Arkansas  and 
Louisiana,  it  does  not  so  much  as  print  a  report, 
and  the  present  writer  is  indebted  entirely  to  the 
courtesy  of  the  governors  of  these  two  States  for 
letters  and  manuscript  tables  imparting  the  infor- 
mation which  enables  him  to  write.  "  The  State," 
says  the  clerk  of  the  Louisiana  penitentiary,  "  has 
no  expense  except  keeping  the  building  in  re- 
pair." "  The  State,"  writes  the  governor's  secre- 
tary in  Arkansas,  "  is  at  no  expense  whatever." 
In  Mississippi,  the  terms  of  the  present  lease 
make  no  mention  whatever  of  any  moral,  relig- 
ious, or  educational  privilege,  or  duty.  "All 
convicts  sentenced  for  a  period  of  ten  years  or 
less,  said  lessees  may  work  outside  the  peniten- 
tiary, but  within  the  limits  of  the  State  of  Mis- 
sissippi, in  building  railroads,  levees,  or  in  any 
private  labor  or  employment''  One  of  the  effects 
of  such  a  rule  is  that  a  convict  condemned  to 
thirty  or  forty  years'  service,  being  kept  within 
the  walls,  has  fully  three  chances  to  one  of  out- 


THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 

living  the  convict  who  is  sentenced  to  eight  or 
ten  years'  service,  and  who  must,  therefore,  work 
outside.  Yet  it  is  not  intended  to  imply  that  the 
long-term  convict  inside  the  prison  is  likely  to 
serve  out  his  sentence.  While  among  a  majority 
of  commitments  on  shorter  periods,  men,  women, 
and  children  are  frequently  sentenced  for  terms 
of  15,  20,  30,  40,  and  sometimes  even  of  50  years, 
a  prisoner  can  rarely  be  found  to  have  survived 
ten  years  of  this  brutal  slavery  either  in  the 
prison  or  in  the  convict  camp.  In  Alabama,  in 
1880,  there  were  but  three  who  had  been  in  con- 
finement eight  years,  and  one  nine;  while  not 
one  had  lived  out  ten  years'  imprisonment.  In 
Mississippi,  December  I,  1 88 1,  among  77  convicts 
then  on  the  roll  under  10  years'  sentence,  17 
under  sentences  of  between  10  and  20,  and  23 
under  sentences  of  between  20  and  50  years,  none 
had  served  1 1  years,  only  two  had  served  10,  and 
only  3  others  had  served  9  years.1  There  were 
25  distinct  outside  gangs,  and  their  average 
annual  rate  of  mortality  for  that  and  the  previous 
year  was  over  8  per  cent. 

During  the  same  term,  142  convicts  escaped ; 
which  is  to  say  that,  for  every  four  law-breakers 
put  into  the  penitentiary,  one  got  away;  and 

1  From  the  nature  of  the  tabulated  roll,  the  time  served  by 
those  under  life  sentences  could  not  be  computed ;  but  there  is 
no  reason  to  suppose  it  would  materially  change  the  result,  were 
it  known. 


IN  THE  SOUTHERN  STA TES.  i  j  \ 

against  the  whole  number  so  escaping  that  were 
but  25  recaptures.  The  same  proportion  of 
commitments  and  escapes  is  true  of  the  Arkansas 
prison  for  the  year  ending  the  3Oth  of  last  April. 
In  Louisiana  the  proportion  is  smaller,  but  far 
from  small.  A  surer  escape  in  Louisiana  was  to 
die;  and  in  1881,  14  per  cent,  perished.  The 
means  are  wanting  to  show  what  part  of  this 
mortality  belongs  to  the  penitentiary  at  Baton 
Rouge  and  what  to  the  camps  outside ;  but  if 
anything  may  be  inferred  from  the  mortal  results 
of  the  Lease  System  in  other  States,  the  year's 
death-rate  of  the  convict  camps  of  Louisiana 
must  exceed  that  of  any  pestilence  that  ever  fell 
upon  Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages.  And  as  far 
as  popular  rumor  goes,  it  confirms  this  assump- 
tion on  eveiy  hand.  Every  mention  of  these 
camps  is  followed  by  the  execrations  of  a  scan- 
dalized community,  whose  ear  is  every  now  and 
then  shocked  afresh  with  some  new  whisper  of 
their  frightful  barbarities.  It  is  not  for  the  pres- 
ent writer  to  assert,  that  every  other  community 
where  the  leasing  of  convicts  prevails  is  moved 
to  indignation  by  the  same  sense  of  outrage  and 
disgrace ;  yet  it  certainly  would  be  but  a  charitable 
assumption  to  believe  that  the  day  is  not  remote 
when,  in  every  such  region,  the  sentiment  of  the  peo- 
ple will  write,  over  the  gates  of  the  convict  stock- 
ades and  over  the  doors  of  the  lessees'  sumptuous 
homes,  one  word  :  Aceldama — the  field  of  blood. 


THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 


XIV.    CONCLUSIONS. 

There  never  was  a  worse  falsification  of 
accounts,  than  that  which  persuades  a  commu- 
nity that  the  system  of  leasing  out  its  convicts 
is  profitable.  Out  of  its  own  mouth  —  by  the  tes- 
timony of  its  own  official  reports  —  what  have  we 
not  proved  against  it?  We  have  shown: 

1.  That,  by  the  very  ends  for  which  it  exists, 
it  makes  a  proper  management  of  prisons  impos- 
sible, and  lays  the  hand  of  arrest  upon  reforma- 
tory discipline. 

2.  That  it  contents   itself,  the   State,  and   the 
public  mind,  with  prisons  that  are  in  every  way 
a  disgrace  to  civilization. 

3.  That  in  practice  it  is  brutally  cruel. 

4.  That  it  hardens,  debases,  and  corrupts  the 
criminal,  commited  to  it  by  the  law  in  order  that, 
if  possible,  he  may  be  reformed  and  reclaimed 
to  virtue  and  society. 

5.  That  it  fixes  and  enforces  the  suicidal  and 
inhuman  error,  that  the  community  must  not  be 
put  to  any  expense  for  the  reduction  of  crime 
or  the  reformation  of  criminals. 

6.  That  it  inflicts  a  different   sentence    upon 
every  culprit  that  comes  into  its  clutches  from 
that   which    the   law    and   the    court    has    pro- 
nounced.    So  that  there  is  not  to-day  a  single 
penitentiary  convict,  from  the   Potomac  around 


IN  THE  SOUTHERN  STATES. 


173 


to  the  Rio  Grande,  who  is  receiving  the  sentence 
really  contemplated  by  the  law  under  which  he 
stands  condemned. 

7.  That  it  kills  like  a  pestilence,  teaches  the 
people  to  be  cruel,  sets   up  a  false  system   of 
clemency,  and  seduces  the  State  into  the  com- 
mittal of  murder  for  money. 

8.  That  in  two  years  it  permitted  eleven  hun- 
dred prisoners  to  escape. 

Which  of  these  is  its  profitable  feature  ?  Will 
some  one  raise  the  plea  of  necessity?  The 
necessity  is  exactly  the  reverse.  It  is  absolutely 
necessary  to  society's  interests  and  honor  that 
what  the  Lease  System  in  its  very  nature  forbids 
should  be  sought ;  and  that  what  it  by  nature 
seeks  should  be  forbidden. 

XV.    EXCUSES    FOR   THE   SYSTEM. 

There  are  two  or  three  excuses  often  made 
for  this  system,  even  by  those  who  look  upon  it 
with  disfavor  and  protestations,  and  by  some 
who  are  presumably  familiar  with  the  facts  con- 
cerning convict  management  in  other  States  and 
other  countries.  But  these  pleas  are  based  upon 
singularly  unfounded  assumptions.  One  is  that 
the  States  using  the  Lease  System,  in  whole  or 
part,  have  not  those  large  prison  populations 
which  are  thought  to  be  necessary  to  the  suc- 
cessful operation  of  other  systems.  In  point  of 


174 


THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 


fact,  much  the  largest  population  belonging  to 
any  one  prison  in  the  United  States,  in  1880,  was 
in  Texas,  under  the  Lease  System.  The  fourth 
in  numbers  is  that  of  Tennessee,  also  leased. 
That  of  Georgia,  leased,  is  more  than  twice  that 
of  Maryland,  managed  on  the  Contract  System. 
The  smallest  State  prison  population  in  the 
United  States,  that  of  Rhode  Island,  numbering, 
at  the  close  of  last  year,  only  eighty-one  convicts, 
showed  a  loss  that  year,  on  the  Contract  System, 
of  only  eleven  dollars.  Missouri  manages  a  con- 
vict population  of  the  same  size  as  that  of  Geor- 
gia, and  boasts  a  cash  profit,  on  the  Contract 
System.  Indeed  the  State  prisons  under  the  Lease 
System  are,  almost  without  exception,  populous 
prisons,  the  average  population  among  the  whole 
twelve  so  governed  being  920,  while  that  of  the 
thirty-three  that  exclude  the  system  is  but  560. 
Another  unfounded  assumption  is  that  the 
prisons  working  under  the  Contract  or  the  Public 
Accounts  System  receive  their  inmates  largely 
from  the  ranks  of  men  skilled  in  trade.  The 
truth  is,  the  strongest  argument  in  favor  of  teach- 
ing trades  in  prison  lies  in  the  fact  that  men  with 
trades  keep  out  of  prison,  or  appear  there  only 
in  decided  minorities,  in  any  community ;  and 
prisons  everywhere  receive  especially  but  few 
acquainted  with  the  two  or  three  or  five  or  six 
skilled  industries  that  happen  to  be  carried  on 
within  their  walls. 


IN  THE  SO  UTHERN  STA  TES.  i  j  5 

It  is  assumed,  again,  that  the  great  majority 
of  the  inmates  of  our  leased  prisons  are  not 
only  without  mechanical  training,  but  without 
mechanical  aptitude.  Yet,  in  fact,  there  is  quite 
enough  skilled  work  taught  to  just  this  class  in 
just  these  prisons  to  make  void  the  argument. 
Within  the  walls  of  the  Virginia  State  peniten- 
tiary in  September,  1881,  under  the  Contract 
System,  tobacco,  shoes,  barrels,  and  clothing  were 
being  made  with  a  force  of  which  three-fifths  were 
black  men.  The  whole  force  of  the  Maryland 
prison  is  engaged,  within  its  walls,  under  contrac- 
tors, in  marble-cutting  and  the  manufacture  of 
shoes,  stoves  and  hollow  iron-ware,  and  in  No- 
vember, 1 88 1,  consisted  of  five  blacks  to  every 
three  whites,  and  of  the  entire  number  not  one 
in  ten  was  previously  acquainted  with  any  handi- 
craft that  could  be  of  any  service  to  him  in  any 
of  these  occupations. 

Moreover,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  no 
leased  prison  that  does  not  constantly  receive 
a  sufficient  number  of  skilled  convicts,  both 
white  and  black,  to  constitute  a  good  teaching 
force  for  the  training  of  the  unskilled.  The 
Texas  Penitentiary,  in  1880,  had  on  its  rolls  39 
workers  in  wood,  20  in  leather,  50  in  metals  and 
machinery,  20  in  stone  and  brick,  7  engravers 
and  printers,  and  1 1  painters. 

The  leased  prisons,  as  it  happens,  have  one 
decided  advantage  in  this  regard ;  the  high  aver- 


THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 

age  term  of  sentences  affords  an  unusual  oppor- 
tunity for  training  the  convicts  to  skilled  labor, 
and  making  the  best  use,  both  pecuniary  and 
reformatory,  of  their  occupations.  The  South 
Carolina  penitentiary  is  probably  an  exception ; 
and  yet  it  is  in  this  prison  that  the  manufacture 
of  shoes,  say  its  officers,  might  easily  be  carried 
on  with  cash  profit.  In  the  Georgia  penitentiary, 
in  1880,  there  were  87  sentenced  for  life;  104 
for  terms  above  ten  years  and  less  than  twenty ; 
101  for  twenty  years  ;  10  for  higher  terms  up  to 
forty  years,  and  only  22  for  as  low  a  term  as 
one  year, — in  a  total  of  1185  inmates.  In  the 
Texas  State  prison,  in  October,  1882,  with  a  pop- 
ulation of  2378,  only  two  were  under  sentences 
of  less  than  two  years'  length.1  To  increase  the 
advantage,  the  long  sentences  fall  with  special 
frequency  upon  the  class  that  is  assumed  to 
require  an  undue  length  of  training.  In  the 
Georgia  convict  force  just  noted,  for  instance, 
only  15  were  whites  among  the  215  under 
sentences  above  ten  years. 

But  why  need  we  linger  to  show  that  there 
is  ample  opportunity  in  these  prisons  to  teach 
the  inmates  trades,  if  only  the  system  were  such 
as  to  permit  it  ?  The  choice  of  a  better  system 
does  not  rest  upon  this.  In  the  Contract  and 

1  Some  idea  of  the  ferocity  of  these  sentences  may  be  got  from 
the  fact  that  509  of  these  Texas  convicts  were  under  twenty 
years  of  age. 


IN  THE  SOUTHERN  STATES. 


177 


Public  Accounts  prisons,  it  is  not  at  all  the  uni- 
versal practice  to  make  the  unskilled  convict 
acquainted  with  a  trade.  This  is  done  only  in  a 
few  prisons.  Generally, — much  too  generally, — 
he  is  set  to  some  simple  task,  some  minute  frac- 
tion of  the  work  of  manufacturing  some  article, 
a  task  that  he  learns  to  do  at  most  in  a  few 
days,  becomes  skillful  in  within  a  few  weeks, 
and  continues  to  do  unceasingly  from  the  begin- 
ning of  his  imprisonment  to  the  day  of  his  dis- 
charge. He  works  a  lever  or  peddle  that  drives 
pegs  into  a  shoe ;  or  he  turns  down  or  up  the 
rims  of  hats,  or  varnishes  the  heels  of  innumer- 
able boots,  or  turns  a  small  wheel  that  bottoms 
countless  tin  cans.  He  is  employed  according 
to  his  physical  strength  and  his  intelligence.  It 
is  no  small  misfortune  to  society  that  such  indus- 
tries leave  the  convict  at  last  without  a  trade; 
but,  comparing  them  with  the  tasks  of  the  lessees' 
camps,  it  may  be  said  they  do  not  murder  him, 
nor  torture  him,  but  are  to  those  tasks  what 
light  is  to  darkness. 

After  all,  these  objections  to  the  abandonment 
of  the  Lease  System,  even  if  they  were  otherwise 
well  grounded,  would  fail  at  last  when  it  comes 
to  be  seen  that  the  system  does  not  make  good 
even  its  one  poor  profession ;  it  does  not,  even 
pecuniarily  "  pay."  In  flush  times  it  hands  in 
a  few  thousands, — sometimes  even  a  few  ten- 
thousands, — annually,  into  the  State  treasury. 
23 


I78  THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 

But  its  history  is  a  long  record  of  discoveries 
and  rediscoveries  on  the  part  of  the  State  that 
she  has  been  the  losing  party  in  a  game  of  con- 
fidence, with  nobody  to  blame  but  herself.  How 
much  has  thus  been  lost  morally  baffles  estima- 
tion; suffice  it  to  say,  enough  ungodly  gains 
have  gone  into  the  hands  of  lessees  to  have  put 
every  leased  prison  in  the  country  upon  a  firm 
basis  under  Public  Accounts.  Every  system  is 
liable  to  mismanagement,  but  there  are  systems 
under  which  mismanagement  is  without  excuse 
and  may  be  impeached  and  punished.  The 
Lease  System  is  itself  the  most  atrocious  mis- 
management. It  is  in  its  very  nature  dishonor- 
able to  the  community  that  knowingly  tolerates 
it,  and  in  its  practical  workings  needs  only  to  be 
known  to  be  abhorred  and  cast  out.  It  exists 
to-day,  in  the  twelve  American  Commonwealths 
where  it  is  found,  because  the  people  do  not 
know  what  they  are  tolerating. 

But  is  there  any  need  for  them  longer  to  be 
unaware  of  it  ?  There  is  none.  Nor  is  there  any 
need  that  the  system  should  continue.  We 
have  heard  one,  who  could  give  no  other  ex- 
cuse, urge  the  unfavorableness  of  the  Southern 
climate  to  prison  confinement.  But  what  have 
the  reports  of  prisons  in  this  climate  shown  us  ? 
That  the  mortality  outside,  among  the  prisoners 
selected  (as  is  pretended,  at  least)  for  their  health 
and  strength,  is  twice  and  thrice  and  sometimes 


IN  ThE  SOUTHERN  STATES. 

four  and  five  times  as  great  as  among  the  feebler 
sort  left  within  the  walls.  True,  some  of  the 
leases  still  have  many  years  to  run.  What  of  it? 
Shall  it  be  supinely  taken  for  granted  that  there 
is  no  honorable  way  out  of  these  brutal  and 
wicked  compacts  ?  There  is  no  honorable  way 
to  remain  under  them.  There  are  many  just 
ways  to  be  rid  of  them. 

Let  the  terms  of  these  leases  themselves  con- 
demn their  holders.  There  is  no  reasonable 
doubt  that,  in  many  States,  the  lessees  will  be 
found  to  have  committed  acts  distinctly  forfeiting 
their  rights  under  these  instruments.  Moreover, 
with  all  their  looseness,  these  leases  carry  condi- 
tions, which,  if  construed  as  common  humanity 
and  the  honor  of  the  State  demand,  will  make 
the  leases  intolerable  to  men  whose  profits  are 
coined  from  the  flesh  and  blood  of  human 
beings.  It  is  safe  to  say  there  is  not  a  lessee 
in  the  twelve  convict-leasing  States  who,  were 
he  but  held  to  account  for  the  excesses  in  his 
death-roll  beyond  those  of  prisons  elsewhere  in 
enlightened  countries,  would  not  throw  up  his 
unclean  hands  in  a  moment  and  surrender  to 
decency,  honesty,  humanity,  and  the  public  wel- 
fare. But  we  waste  words.  No  holder  of  these 
compacts  need  be  driven  to  close  quarters  in 
order  that,  by  new  constraints,  they  may  be  made 
to  become  void.  They  are  void  already.  For, 
by  self-evidence,  the  very  principles  upon  which 


THE  CONVICT  LEASE  SYSTEM 

they  are  founded  are  contra  bonos  mores ;  and 
though  fifty  legislatures  had  decreed  it,  not  one 
such  covenant  can  show  cause  why  the  seal  of  the 
commonwealth  and  the  signatures  of  her  offi- 
cers should  not  be  torn  from  it,  and  one  of  the 
most  solemn  of  all  public  trusts  returned  to  those 
official  hands  that,  before  God,  the  world,  and 
the  State,  have  no  right  to  part  with  it. 


A    NEW  AND    UNIFORM   EDITION. 

GEORGE  W.  CABLE'S 
WRITINGS. 

THE    GRANDISSIMES:    A  Story  of  Creole   Life. 

With  a  frontispiece,  "THE  CABILDO  OF  1883."    i   volume,  I2mo.    Price 

reduced  to  $1.25, 

Mr.  Cable  has  given  this  volume  a  slight  revision  as  regards  dialect, 
wherever  —  and  only  where — it  had  no  humorous  value.  The  dialects  of 
the  Creole  Ladies,  of  Raoul  Innerarity,  and  Clemence,  remain  undisturbed. 

OLD  CREOLE  DAYS. 

With  a  frontispiece,  "  THE  CAF£  DES  EXILES."    I  volume,  I2mo,  uniform 
with  The  Grandissimes,  $1.25. 

POPULAR   EDITION  OF   OLD  CREOLE  DAYS. 

Two  series,  sold  separately,  30  cents  each.     The  same  in  cloth,  gilt  top, 
with  frontispieces,  75  cents  each. 

"  Here  is  true  art  at  work.  Here  is  poetry,  pathos,  tragedy,  humor. 
Here  is  an  entrancing  style.  Here  is  a  new  field,  one  full  of  passion  and 
beauty.  Here  is  a  local  color,  with  strong  drawing.  Here,  in  this  little 
volume,  is  life,  breath,  and  blood.  The  author  of  this  book  is  an  artist,  and 
over  such  a  revelation  one  maybe  permitted  strong  words." — Cincinnati 
Times. 

For  sale  by  all  book-sellers,  or  sent,  post-paid,  by  the  publishers. 

CHARLES     SCRIBNER'S     SONS. 

74  j  <&•  745  Broadway,  New-York. 


OLD   CREOLE  DAYS 

GEORGE   W.  CABLE. 

One   Volume,  12mo,  extra  cloth,        •       *  $1.25. 


Mr.  Cable's  sketches  of  life  in  the  old  French  quarter  of  New  Orleani 
display  a  freshness  and  originality,  an  insight  into  the  character  of  the 
mixed  races  there,  and  a  faculty  of  seizing  on  the  picturesque  phases  of 
hfe  among  thesa  oddly  contrasted  people,  that  give  them  an  importance 
far  above  their  value  as  a  mere  collection  of  clever  stories.  '*  Sieur 
George,"  u  Madame  Delicieuse,"  "  Jean-ah  Poquelin,"  and  "The  Belles 
Demoiselles'  Plantation,"  are  some  of  the  stories  included — carrying  even 
in  their  titles  some  of  their  quaint  attractiveness. 

CRITICAL    NOTICES. 

•*  It  is  very  seldom  indeed  that  we  meet  with  a  book  so  distinctly  marking  the  advent 
of  a  writer  of  high  artistic  power  and  fresh  observation,  as  this  of  Mr.  Cable's.  After 
re-reading  carefully,  and  with  the  keenest  enjoyment,  the  stories  now  collected  under  one 
heading,  we  not  only  have  no  hesitation  in  pronouncing  their  author  a  genius  with  special 
and  captivating  endowments,  but  we  feel  it  an  imperative  critical  duty  to  so  declare  him.'5 

— Boston  Courier. 

"  Mr.  Cable  has  the  rare  gift  of  keen  observation  united  to  great  descriptive  power. 
.  .  .  He  has  portrayed  the  character  of  the  remnant  of  France  stranded  on  a  'oreigr 
shore,  in  so  many  aspects,  that  the  reader  gains  a  most  perfect  idea  of  the  strange  com- 
pound of  courtesy  and  selfishness,  of  grace  and  untruthfu  ness,  of  bravery  and  cunning, 
which  that  character  presents.  .  .  The  stories,  themselves,  display  an  inventive  genius 
which  ranks  the  author  among  the  best  of  our  modern  writers." — Christian  Intelli&  enar. 

"These  charming;  stories  attract  attention  and  commendation  by  their  quaint  delicacy 
of  style,  their  faithful  delineation  of  Creole  character,  and  a  marked  originality.  The 
careful  rendering  of  the  dialect  reveals  patient  study  of  living  models  ;  and  to  any  reader 
whose  ear  is  accustomed  to  the  broken  English,  as  heard  in  the  parts  of  our  city  every 
day,  its  truth  to  nature  is  striking." — New  Orleans  Picayune. 

"  Here  is  true  art  work.  Here  is  poetry,  pathos,  tragedy,  humor.  Here  is  an  entranc- 
ing style.  Here  is  a  new  field,  one  full  of  passion  and  beauty.  Here  is  local  color  with 
strong  drawing.  Here,  in  this  little  volume,  is  life,  breath,  and  blood.  The  author  ol 
this  book  is  an  artist,  and  over  such  a  revelation  one  may  be  permitted  strong  words." 

—Cincinnati  Times. 

"To  a  keen  zest  for  what  is  antique  and  picturesque,  Mr.  Cable  adds  a  surprising 
jkilL,  for  so  yo,ung  a  writer,  in  conceiving  and  developing  a  plot.  .  .  .  He  has  ren- 
dered very  nriicly  the  attractive  childlike  quality  so  often  seen  among  men  of  Latin  races, 
and  as  to  Tiis  women,  they  are  as  delightful  as  the  scent  of  the  flowers  which  he  mention* 
every  now  and  then." — N.  Y.  Times. 

"  The  seven  sketches  which  compose  this  bright  little  volume  are  full  of  a  delicate  pathetk 
*umor  which  has  rarely  been  equaled  in  American  Literature." — Detroit  Free  Preit. 

«'  The>e  half-pathetic,  half-humorous,  and  altogether  delicate  sketches,  constitute 
uctreme»y  good  literature.  .  .  .  There  is  the  touch  of  a  true  artist  in  them." — Ev.  Feet 

"  These  stories  contain  a  most  attractive  blending  of  vivid  descriptions  of  local  sceneo 
nth  admirable  delineations  of  personal  character." — Congregationalist. 


*  Tht    above   book  for  tale  by  all  booksellers,  or  will  be  ten 
of  price,  by 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S   SONS,  PUBLISHERS, 
743  AND  745  BROADWAY,  NEW 


THE    GRANDISSIMES. 

A    STORY     OF     CREOLE     LIFE. 

By    GEORGE    W.     CABLE, 

AutJtor  of  "  Old  Creole  Days." 


One  Volume,  12mo,  extra  cloth ,       $1.23. 

The  extraordinary  interest  excited  by  Mr.  Cable's  sketches  of  life  in  the 
old  French  quarter  of  New  Orleans,  in  his  first  book,  "  Old  Creole  Days," 
will  be  still  further  aroused  by  his  novel  of  Creole  life. 

The  scene  of  the  story  is  laid  in  New  Orleans,  in  the  earlier  years  of  the 
century,  at  the  time  of  the  cession  of  Louisiana  to  the  United  States  by 
Napoleon.  With  wonderful  delicacy  of  touch,  Mr.  Cable  outlines  his  plot, 
portraying  the  stubborn  adherence  of  the  Creoles  to  the  old  regime,  their 
unwillingness  to  enter  the  Union,  the  feud  of  the  Grandissimes  and  the 
Fusiliers,  and  its  far-reaching  consequences.  All  the  characters  of  the  story 
have  an  originality  and  distinctness  that  make  them  veritable  creations. 


"Such  a  book  goes  far  towards  establishing  an  epoch  in  fiction,  and  it  vlaces  it  be- 
yond a  doubt  that  we  have  in  Mr.  Cable  a  nove.ist  of  positive  original  ty,  and  of  the  very 
first  quality." — Boston  Journal. 

'*  It  will  be  difficult  to  point  to  anyth-'ng  more  vigorously  dramatic  in  our  best  writers 
than  'The  Sto-y  of  Bras-Coupe, '  forming  chapters  twenty-eight  and  twenty-nine. — Bos- 
ton Saturday  Evening  Gazette. 

"  'The  Grandissimas '  is  simply  a  wonderful  romance — the  work  of  an  undoubted  ge- 
nius— a  new  novelist  of  remarkable  power,  claims  the  attention  of  the  American  public. 
It  bears  its  special  stamp  as  markedly  as  did  Gottschalk's  music."—  New  York  Times. 

"  In  point  of  steady,  continued  power,  displayed  alike  in  plot  and  description,  in  point 
jf  the  rarest  local  coloring  evidently  derived  from  the  closest  study  and  observation  of 
Creole  life,  we  rank  this  book  as  among  the  very  first  of  American  fictions." — Christian 
In  teltigettcer. 

"  Mr.  Cable  shows  the  instincts  of  a  thorough  artist,  as  well  a-^  the  genius  of  a  nov- 
elist of  the  first  rank.  .  .  .  It  would  be  difficult  to  imagine  two  lovelier  types  of  woman- 
hoo  1  than  the  youthful  wt-'ow  Aurore  and  her  daughter  Clotilde,  or  a  str  neer,  more  ma- 
jestic specimen  of  the  thorough  gentleman  than  Honore  Grandissime. — Baltimore  Ga- 
zette. 

"  'The  Grandissimes'  is  a  novel  that  repays  study.  It  opens  to  most  of  us  an  un- 
known society,  an  unknown  world,  absolutely  fresh  characters,  a  d'alect  of  which  we  had 
only  fragments  before,  and  it  iUuminntes  a  historical  period  thu  was  in  the  dark  .  .  . 
It  is,  in  many  resp  cts,  the  most  original  contribution  to  American  fiction."  Ha?  tford 
Courant. 

*'  There  are  few  living  American  wr'ters  who  can  reproduce  for  us  mnre  perfectly  than 
Mr.  Cable  does,in  his  best  moments,  the  speech,  the  manners,  the  whole  social  atmosphere 
or  a  remote  time  and  a  peculiar  people.  Characters  stand  out  from  his  pages  with  a  life- 
like distinctness  ;  and  in  their  dialogue  we  hear  the  very  tones  of  their  voice  and  catch 
t  e  ecoentr.cities  of  their  accent.  A  delicious  flavor  of  humor  penetrates  the  story  ;  and 
the  tragic  portions  .  .  .  are  handled  with  rare  strength." — New  York  Tribune. 


*#*  For  sale  by  all   booksellers,    or    sent,   post-paid,    upon   receipt   of 
•price,  by 

CHARLES  SCRIRNF.R'S  SONS,   PUBLISHERS, 

743  AND  745  BROADWAY,  NEW  YOKK. 


THE 

CREOLES  OF  LOUISIANA. 

BY  GEORGE  W.  CABLE, 
Author  of  "OLD  CREOLE  DAYS,"  "  THE  GRANDISSIMES,"  etc, 


One  Volume.    8vo.    Beautifully  Illustrated.    Cloth,  $3.50.    Extra  gilt, 
in  a  box,  $5.00. 


Mr.  Cable,  who  has  done  so  much  to  make  the  life  and  customs  of  the 
Creoles  familiar,  in  his  novels,  now  takes  up  the  subject  again  in  a  series 
of  most  delightful  sketches,  historical  and  descriptive.  The  papers  are  pro- 
fusely illustrated,  and  the  book  is  one  of  the  most  beautiful  ever  issued. 


ZEXTOTIOIES- 

"  Mr.  Cable  has  done  his  subject  ample  justice  in  this  handsome, 
interesting  and  amusing  volume.  .  .  .  The  story  is  indeed  full  of 
interest,  and  replete  with  endless  dramatic  episodes." — Pall  Mall 
Budget. 

"Mr.  Cable  fairly  revels  in  the  wealth  of  reminiscence,  tradition 
and  legends,  of  which  his  subject  is  so  prolific.  The  free  flow  of  his 
story  shows  he  is  at  ease,  that  he  is  in  his  own  kingdom,  where  facts 
and  fancy  glide  gracefully  together  in  a  rhetorical  style." — San  Fran- 
cisco Examiner. 

"The  work  will  be  a  valuable  addition  to  the  accumulating  fund 
of  knowledge  that  we  possess  of  the  various  peoples  of  our  conglom- 
erate nation.  We  can  most  heartily  commend  it  as  being  entertaining, 
instructive,  impartial  and  just  to  all  parties." — Chicago  Inter-Ocean. 


Sent  post-paid,   upon  receipt  of  price,  by 

CHARLES     SCRIBNER'S     SONS, 

743-74.5   Broadway,    New    York. 


THIS   BOOK   IS   DUE   ON  THE   LAST  DATE 
STAMPED   BELOW 


RENEWED   BOOKS  ARE  SUBJECT  TO  IMMEDIATE 
RECALL 


UCD  LIBRARY 
1UE  MAY  8     '«/ 1 


LIBRARY,   UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA,  DAVIS 

Book  Slip-Series  458 


162122_ 
Cable,  G.W. 

The  silent  South, 


E185.61 
C3 


Cable 


C3 


162172 


